Stop communalising India’s war against COVID-19: CPM

NEW DELHI: Holding Tablighi Jamaat leadership responsible for organising the meeting when the lockdown was in force, CPI(M) Polit Bureau, in a statement, said on Thursday that the parties should refrain from communalising the incident as the efforts to communalise it would undermine the country's early triumph in containing the deadly virus.

“The coronavirus does not differentiate on the basis of religion. All efforts to communalise the issue must be rebuffed,” the CPI(M) stated in its statement.

The CPI(M) Polit Bureau has also demanded that all big gatherings, social, religious and political, that have been held in many parts of the country after March 13 order prohibiting assembly of more than 200 people must be investigated thoroughly.

“Those attending must be traced and tested. We must

learn from South Korea and Singapore in meticulously tracing all those attending

large congregations, isolating them after aggressive testing and containing the community spread of Covid-19,” the CPI(M) said.

However, condemning the mass gathering of Tablighi Jamaat, the CPI(M) said, “It's a matter of serious concern that a large number of those who were part of Tablighi Jamaat meeting in Delhi dispersed to different parts of the country have been found infected. It is also inexplicable as how authorities allowed a second gathering on second gathering on March 20-21.”

The CPI(M) has also criticised the PM over the creation of the PM Cares Fund for those affected by coronavirus and said that a similar fund was set up after the Pulwama attack and there has been no transparency about it.

The CPI (M) Polit Bureau, in the statement, said that a separate fund for the Covid19 pandemic was unnecessary. “The Prime Minister's National Relief Fund (PMNRF) has been in existence since 1948 and has an unspent balance of Rs 3,800 crore,” the CPI(M) said.