BJP units to present Covid work before PM ›
The party provided food to 22 crore people during the lockdown, and distributed 80 lakh sanitisers and 2.5 crore face covers. ARUN SINGH, BJP general secretary
NEW DELHI: On Saturday, each state unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will make a presentation before Prime Minister Narendra Modi on their initiatives in line with the government’s gareeb kalyan schemes for those in need in the aftermath of the corona pandemic.
BJP general secretary Arun Singh said on Friday said that party units will put out the details of the work, such as, supply of cooked food and ration, masks and sanitisers during the lockdown that was imposed to check the spread of the virus in March.
“The party provided food to 22 crore people during the lockdown, and distributed 80 lakh sanitisers and 2.5 crore face covers,” he said, addressing the media.
Apart from PM Modi, the digital presentation will also be attended by party president J P Nadda, union ministers Amit Shah, Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari.
The party has also been organising virtual rallies to highlight the achievements of the government’s first year in office during the second term at the Centre.
“The party organised over 61 virtual rallies to mark the first anniversary, and 11.49 crore people attended them. Party workers contacted over 5.41 crore people through door-todoor contact programmes,” he said.
To a separate question on PM Modi’s visit to Ladakh and the situation there, Singh said people have faith in the Prime Minister’s leadership, and that he has already made it clear that those eyeing India’s territory will be given a befitting reply.
The BJP leader also dismissed allegations that law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh had deteriorated under the Yogi Adityanath government. “During the Samajwadi Party’s regime, those in power were involved in crime. Now the BJP government has gone after criminals,” he said, reacting to SP’S criticism of the Yogi government.
LUCKNOW: At a time when the country was grappling with deaths caused due to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), a poet, a social worker and a state government employee based in Lucknow have been helping the underprivileged in a manner that no one else has.
Between March and June, the trio cremated 15 unclaimed bodies in Bhaisakund crematorium, the largest of the three crematoriums in the city which handled close to 800 bodies a month in pre-pandemic times.
The city has 23 shelters for homeless people, but government estimates put the number of street dwellers at 3000. Unclaimed bodies – usually of street and pavement dwellers, whose families cannot be traced – are routinely cremated here, said Surya Vikram Singh, incharge of electric crematorium in Lucknow Municipal Corporation. Between March and May, 161 such bodies were cremated.
For Verma, 45, a published poet, and her partners, Deepak Mahajan, 60, a clerk in the rural engineering department, and Mohammad Azhar Hussain, 26, a social worker, this work isn’t new. They have been working with the underprivileged in the city since 2018, and helping the police cremate unclaimed bodies.
However, during Covid, their work became all the more significant. Special guidelines on the handling bodies of infected persons during the pandemic were issued by the Centre even as instances reports of families refusing to accept bodies of their kin, and communities refusing to allow burial of bodies in neighbourhoods emerged from around the country.
And though the Uttar Pradesh state government has not issued specific guidelines on cremating uninfected persons -- the trio only cremates such bodies -Verma ensures that they all wear personal protective gear like masks and gloves.
“I decided to continue doing this work at a time when no one wanted to touch those bodies fearing the spread of coronavirus,” Verma said. “I used to see a lot of [homeless] people suffering. If they fell ill, there was no one to take care of them. [The three of us] decided to work for those who often end up dying on the road in the absence of proper medical care,” she said.
All unclaimed bodies are usually sent to a mortuary for postmortem before cremation, chief medical superintendent of Civil Hospital Ashutosh Dubey said. “Versha is known for her work of bringing the underprivileged to the hospital for treatment. It’s the duty of police to cremate such bodies but sometimes they call Versha when they are busy.”
Police inspectors Kuldeep Singh and Raj Bahadur, who are attached to the mortuary of the government-run KGMU hospital said that they often call upon Verma when their workload is high.
“We started cremating bodies of deprived about two and half years ago. We are in constant touch with police, and ask them to let us know when we can help,” Verma said.