Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said the Narendra Modi government was betraying citizens and hiding facts about the devastating second wave of the coronavirus pandemic under the garb of “spreading positivity”.

Gandhi said the government was trying to ignore truths and negative information about the pandemic by burying its “head in the sand”.

The Congress leader shared a news clip that said the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre was planning to launch a “positivity campaign”. As per the report, authorities were thinking of going as far as asking for a modification in the Delhi government’s daily bulletin to reflect the number of people who tested negative, instead of giving a count of total positive cases in a day.

The idea was to counter widespread anger and criticism directed toward Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for its handling of the second wave, according to NDTV. As part of these efforts, the BJP along with its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is now trying to connect better with the masses and highlight the positive work that is being done by the government, the channel reported.

In his tweet, Gandhi said the government was trying to draw false equivalencies to divert attention from the real problem. “The false conscience of positive thinking is a joke on all the health care workers and families who have their lost loved ones and are oxygen, hospital, drug shortages,” he added. “Hiding in the the sand is not being positive, it is cheating the countrymen.”

Poll strategist Prashant Kishor called it a “disgusting” to push “propaganda” in the name of spreading positivity. “For being positive we don’t have to become blind propagandist of the government,” he added.

India has reported more than 3 lakh cases a day every day for the past three weeks, since April 22. On May 1, it hit a new record by crossing the 4-lakh mark, the highest single-day tally by any country in the world. This was surpassed on May 7, when India recorded 4.14 lakh daily cases. So far in May, India’s daily tally has crossed the 4-lakh mark on five days. Thousands have died every day, but reports allege that the government is severely undercounting Covid-19 deaths.

The brutal second wave have left the country’s hospitals on the brink of collapse, leading to shortages in oxygens, hospital beds and medicines. The government is now trying to arrange supplies from abroad.

Many people have died in ambulances and car parks waiting for a bed or oxygen, while morgues and crematoriums struggle to deal with the flow of bodies. The surge in infections has coincided with a dramatic drop in vaccinations because of supply and delivery problems.