Rahul Gandhi: Modi government lying about Covid fatality; PM is terrified, in shock
Rahul Gandhi claims that the Narendra Modi government is lying on the death figures and that the numbers are exponentially false
FollowCongress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday appeared to back The New York Times report, which claimed that India's death count was much more than the government has revealed, and accused the Narendra Modi government of blatantly lying on the subject.
In a media briefing, Rahul Gandhi said, "The government is lying on the death figures. The government's casualty figure is exponentially false."
Slamming the Narendra Modi government over its handling of the pandemic and lack of concern for the coming third wave, Rahul said, "I fear what is coming. As the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi needs to say that we need to prepare for the third wave. What do we need to do? How do we close the space for the virus? He is not doing that. He is terrified; he is in shock. He is trying to figure out how he repairs his image. His image is gone... it's dead. I would advise him to stop worrying about his image and start thinking about the problem in front of him which is now killing people; probably end up killing millions of people."
On Thursday, the government had rejected as baseless a New York Times report that said India's Covid deaths were severely undercounted and underreported.
The New York Times has on Tuesday reported that India's death count was more likely three times the official figure of 3 lakh. The article cited data from three nationwide sero surveys or antibody tests.
The article offered various scenarios and estimated a worst-case scenario of 42 lakh deaths.
While admitting that there may be some late reporting of deaths, Dr Paul said there was no intention of either states or the Centre to hide fatalities and that if the same three times yardstick were to be applied to New York, then there would be 50,000 deaths there and not 16,000 as claimed.
