New Delhi: At least 40 lakh people must have lost life due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which was due to the negligence of the Union government, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Sunday. He demanded the government release Rs 4 lakh compensation for the victims of each family, The Indian Express reported.
Rahul shared a screengrab of a New York Times (NYT) report, which stated that India stalls the World Health Organization's (WHO) efforts to make its Covid-19 death toll public and tweeted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi neither tells the truth himself nor does he allow anyone else to speak it. His government still lies that no one died due to oxygen shortage, he said.
मोदी जी ना सच बोलते हैं, ना बोलने देते हैं।
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) April 17, 2022
वो तो अब भी झूठ बोलते हैं कि oxygen shortage से कोई नहीं मरा!
मैंने पहले भी कहा था - कोविड में सरकार की लापरवाहियों से 5 लाख नहीं, 40 लाख भारतीयों की मौत हुई।
फ़र्ज़ निभाईये, मोदी जी - हर पीड़ित परिवार को ₹4 लाख का मुआवज़ा दीजिए। pic.twitter.com/ZYKiSK2XMJ
He underscored that a large number of deaths related to the pandemic were not reported. Because of the government's negligence, it was 40 lakh people died instead of 5 lakh, he said.
However, the Union Health Ministry has contented that the methodology adopted by WHO to estimate pandemic mortalities is problematic. The ministry, in a statement, added that it had raised the concern before the global health agency multiple times.
It said that the same model could not be applied to all countries since India is large, has diverse demography and is heavily populated.
WHO has estimated about 15 million deaths due to Covid-19 globally by the end of 2021, while NYT alleged that the agency estimated 40 lakh deaths in India, almost eight times India's official figure.
NYT report stated that the Indian government had placed objections to releasing WHO's data and tried to keep it from the Indian public.