Kolkata, (Samajweekly) West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress on Saturday launched a blitz attack on the visiting Inter-Ministerial Central Teams (IMCTs), as two ministers and two MPs accused the delegations of spreading political virus by speaking on the lines of the BJP and thereby disrupting the fight against the raging Covid-19 putbreak.
Trinamool Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’Brien claimed the IMCTs’ visit has served no purpose as they are touring the districts with no hotspots.
“Their real aim is to spread political virus. They are doing it shamelessly. Blatantly,” O’Brien said in a video message.
O’Brien also described the IMCT as “India’s Most Callous Team” and “I Must Cause Trouble (in Bengal)”.
The Centre has sent two IMCTs to Bengal to assess the Covid-19 situation and the effectiveness of the lockdown, after receiving reports of health norm violations and suppression of figures of the dead and affected.
While one is reviewing the situation in Kolkata and the adjacent districts, the other one is moving around North Bengal.
Another Trinamool Rajya Sabha member and Indian Medical Association (IMA) President Santanu Sen accused the IMCT of peddling “false information” in its letters to the sate Chief Secretary.
“As a doctor and head of the Indian Medical Association, I would like to state that the letters are full of wrong information. Yesterday they said the testing reports were being received after a long delay.
“They should also have said the reports got delayed as the test results were inconclusive time and again due to the faulty kits supplied by the NICED (National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases, a Kolkata-based associate of the Indian Council of Medical Research),” said Sen.
He accused the Central team of “constantly giving false information” about the number of ventilators and patients at the M.R. Bangur Covid-19 hospital here.
“They are trying to mislead the people by penning official letters full of false information and identical in tune to a political party and the state Governor,” he said, demanding a public apology from the IMCTS.
Sen also expressed apprehension about the fallout of the “defective” Covid-19 test kits supplied to the state.
“What is the guarantee that the earlier kits were ok? Rapid tests have also been suspended for 72 hours due to these faulty kits. The Centre is saying Kolkata is a red zone. So conducting rapid tests is a must. Deferring the tests by a single day is nothing but pushing so many people into danger,” he said.
State Minister for Urban Development and Kolkata Mayor Firhad Hakim accused the Central team and Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar of “parroting BJP propaganda”.
“The old maxim goes ‘what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow’. But now it is ‘what BJP says today, the Governor and the Central government say tomorrow’,” he said.
Minister for North Bengal Affairs, Rabindranath Ghosh, advised the Central team to focus its attention on other states where the Covid-19 disease was more prevalent.
“Our Chief Minister (Mamata Banerjee) is monitoring the situation round the clock. We are fine here. They are wasting the time of our officials by roaming around various places. Our fight against Covid-19 is getting disrupted,” said Ghosh.
