Ramesh Chennithala writes to Kerala CM on Covid management

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala has charged chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan of creating police raj in state by handing over major responsibilities of Covid-19 containment from health department to police.
In an open letter sent to Vijayan on Tuesday, Chennithala said hypocrisy of the chief minister was exposed when he blamed the opposition for the failure of Covid-19 containment. “It was surprising to see that the government handed over major responsibilities such as identifying containment zones, monitoring the people on quarantine, contact tracing and ensuring social distancing in public places from the health department to police.There is no doubt that this will lead to law and order issues, police atrocities and human-rights violations. In short, the state is going to witness police raj,” Chennithala said in the letter.
Reminding how deployment of commandos in Poonthura had backfired, the Congress leader said Covid-19 pandemic should be handled with empathy and compassion. “I have cautioned that this is a health emergency and not a law and order issue. The health department should lead Covid-prevention activities. The chief minister has insulted the health department officials with this decision,” he said. The opposition leader said the double standards of the chief minister were exposed on Monday when he admitted failure in handling the Covid-19 crisis. “Later, when the CM realised that his admission has backfired and turned into a controversy, he tried to escape by putting the blame on the opposition,” he said.
Chennithala alleged that the CM while lecturing on Covid-19 management at his evening press conferences has been looting the state too. The chief minister is using the Covid crisis to hide all major scams from Sprinklr to gold smuggling, he said.
The opposition leader said the state made lapses by delaying tests and showcasing inaccurate data. “While neighbouring states have conducted 30,000-40,000 tests daily, ours were just 20,000 tests per day. We couldn’t find out asymptomatic cases due to low-testing rate. Now our test positivity ratio is 4.9. We are at 10th position in terms of tests per million and total number of tests. In the list of 25 states, we stand in 21st position in recovery rate,” he said. He also demanded that the state government should increase testing immediately by including private labs after issuing proper guidelines.