Rahul Gandhi alleges govt hiding Coronavirus deaths

New Delhi: Amid the controversy over alleged discrepancies in the counts of death due to Covid-19, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused the Central government of "hiding" the actual coronavirus death figures. The Congress leader also urged people to raise their voice for a universal free vaccination.

"GoI is hiding actual Covid deaths," he said in a tweet, tagging a media report that conducted a survey on who people thought were responsible for coronavirus deaths.

Gandhi also launched a campaign to pressure the government for universal free vaccination in the country.

Sharing a video highlighting the shortage of vaccines, he said, "Vaccine is the strongest protection against the corona pandemic. You should also raise your voice for providing free vaccination to the people of the country - wake up the central government."

His sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra also tweeted for universal free vaccination and slammed the government over a "confused and dithering" vaccination policy.

"We are one of the biggest vaccine manufacturers in the world. Yet only 3.4 per cent of our population is fully vaccinated. Who is responsible for India's confused and dithering vaccination programme," she asked in the tweet.

She further said, "On August 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared that there was a plan in place to vaccinate every Indian. But it is now mid-2021, and the country's inoculation rate is just 1.9 million people per day, whereas "we need 7 to 8 million people to be vaccinated per day to achieve that target."

"The Centre first took all responsibility, after that as the 2nd wave hit it started to abdicate responsibility to the states. Other federal countries like Germany and the USA have followed a completely different process, where the Centre has procured the vaccines and distributed it to states," she asked in a video tagged in the tweet.