Bengal is 12th on Covid scale, what is Central team doing here: State govt

Pritesh Basu | MP | 23 April 2020 | Kolkata: Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha on Thursday questioned the Centre's decision to send its teams to eight districts of Bengal to assess the COVID-19 situation when the same were sent to only four places which were worse affected by the pandemic in the country. 

He also informed the media at Nabanna that members of the Central teams have, however, expressed their satisfaction over the measures taken by the state in imposing the lockdown and to fight the disease, though it was not officially stated. The Central teams in South Bengal on Thursday visited Rajarhat Quarantine Centre and MR Bangur Hospital. 

While speaking about the state's position in terms of COVID-19 in the country, Sinha stated that Bengal is at present in the 12th position of the COVID scale among all the other states. Hence, it is really surprising that the Central teams were sent to visit eight districts in Bengal that include some in North Bengal as well where there had been no reports of any positive cases in the past few weeks. 

"At the same time, the Central teams have been sent to only four other places, including Mumbai and Pune in Maharashtra, Indore in Madhya Pradesh and Jaipur in Rajasthan," Sinha said after raising doubt on the process of selecting the places of visit of the Central teams. 

"What big violation of guidelines has taken place in Bengal that eight teams have been sent," he questioned. 

Sinha held the Press conference as Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee visited different parts of the city urging people to follow the lockdown norms. He also states that the situation would turn more challenging if the lockdown is withdrawn on May 4. 

Stating that they have extended full support to the Central teams only after protesting against the Centre's move of sending them without consulting the state government, Sinha said all information has been provided to them as they had asked for in a letter on Wednesday. 

"We cannot continue going on giving data in this format. Instead, we will prefer sending them e-mails if they ask for any more information," the Chief Secretary said after giving a strong reaction stating that it is meaningless to engage a senior officer like the Director of Health Services to move around with the Central team leaving all other important work. 

Replying to a question that how long the Central teams will be staying in Bengal, Sinha said: "We have not invited them. It is fine if they want to spend the holidays here. It is their prerogative." 

Referring to his discussion with Director General of ICMR Balaram Bharghav over the need of sending testing kits to Bengal at the earliest, Sinha said: "The state government has ordered 45000 VTMs and 14000 RNA extractors. But we have to depend on them or RT-PCR kits." 

This comes when 58 new positive COVID-19 cases were reported in the past 24 hours and 80 per cent of them are from Kolkata while 24 were released after recovery. As many as 334 positive cases have been reported.