Indore May Soon Become Wuhan if Covid-19 Outbreak is Not Arrested, Says Patwari as Cong-BJP Slug it Out

Indore: The Congress and the BJP have been passing the buck where the COVID-19 outbreak in Madhya Pradesh is concerned.

Congress state media cell chairman Jitu Patwari in a statement on Friday claimed that Indore’s situation has turned graver in 25 days of lockdown and Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has failed miserably in preventing the spread of this virus.

The state’s commercial capital currently accounts for two-thirds of the total number of positive cases in the state. The number of positive cases has almost tripled over the last week, from 249 on April 10 to 842 on Friday. The state’s toll stands at 1,274.

Patwari urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to personally assess the situation in Indore personally, claiming if not done, Indore would soon become Wuhan city, the epicenter of the virus. Claiming that Chouhan has been running away from reality, Patwari asked him to start functioning from Indore.

Meanwhile, the BJP has also blamed the previous Congress government for the mess, with BJP spokesperson Rajneesh Agrawal blaming the inefficiency of the Kamal Nath government. Agrawal claimed that the Centre had issued guidelines for the prevention of coronavirus even before the first case was reported in India, but the state government had failed to do anything. Agrawal claimed the state is paying a price for the mistakes of Nath and that the Congress is now shifting the blame to Chouhan.

Indore Collector Manish Singh on Friday said around 5,000-6,000 fliers who reached the city are to be blamed for the outbreak. “I was appointed in Indore later, so I am not sure what kind of guidelines were there for these visitors, but I am of the view that they were allowed without any screening or quarantine advisories,” he said.

Singh claimed several of these visitors had come to Indore to take part in ongoing agitations, hinting at the anti-CAA protest that continued till last month. Several religious heads and noted personalities, including actor Swara Bhaskar, had attended the protest.

Chouhan on Friday put on a brave face and said Indore would set an example for the rest of the country to follow. He said the average rate of testing is 200 per ten lakh population in the state while it is 2,100 per ten lakh population. He said 5,120 samples have been gathered in the city so far and over 1,000 of them have been sent to New Delhi for tests.

The Indore administration has been carrying out surveys of local areas with 489 teams. A total of 3.9 lakh residents have been surveyed in infected areas and around 12-13 lakh in the district, said a statement from the administration.

Indore DIG HN Mishra said software is being used in the city to track those in quarantine and control rooms will receive an alert once the person quarantined leave the place.

Amid persistent lockdown violations, advocate Dinesh Pandey, former president of the district bar association, wrote to Home Minister Amit Shah seeking deployment of army and paramilitary forces at red zones, including Malharganj, Chhatripura Thana, Pandhrinath, Khajrana, Chandan Nagar, central Kotwali and others.

Law and order in Indore and nearby places has been a persistent issue -- four people quarantined at a centre in Indore fled on Wednesday and were nabbed at Morena.