PM TO HOLD MEET WITH GUVS OVER COVID SPIKE ACROSS STATES
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for the first time, will conduct a meeting on April 14 with the governors and lieutenant governors to tackle the spiralling Covid-19 cases in the country. Vice President Venkaiah Naidu will also attend the meeting.
The scheduled meeting underlines the urgency of the situation as Covid cases in April have surpassed the last year’s peak of the first wave, demanding frantic efforts from different quarters to stem the surging pandemic.
The meeting has been scheduled in the wake of the PM’s last meeting with all chief ministers on April 8 in which Modi spoke about involving the governors in the Covid management in states. Modi had maintained that governors should also be involved as the CMs already have their hands full.
The PM had suggested that the governors, along with the chief ministers, can reach out to social influencers such as religious heads, writers and civil society to spread the message of Covid-19 awareness as people have started taking the pandemic very lightly.
The meeting, which would start at 6 pm on Wednesday, is likely to see the PM reiterating the areas of help from the governor. An official, however, pointed out that the governors would certainly not be asked to go into the respective governments’ daily handling of the pandemic but make way for a joint collaboration between the elected CMs and the representatives of the President of India.
This would also be the first such official meeting between the PM and the Vice President on Covid management. An official pointed out that under the constitutional scheme of things, the PM can’t directly call a meeting of the governors, and only the President or the VP can do so.