Kolkata: Abhishek Banerjee, the Trinamool Youth Congress president and party's MP slammed the Centre for its double standards.
"The Centre is allowing to open shops and business at the Indo-Bangla border without holding any discussion with the state government and at the same time blaming it for spreading COVID- 19," he said adding, "I urge the Centre to give up its double standard."
Banerjee said that the Centre did not hold any discussion with the state governments and declared the nationwide lockdown.
"The result has been disastrous. The migrant workers could not come return to their homes and got stranded at various places. Finally, arrangements were made to bring them back. But many were forced to walk to reach their homes. They had faced horrifying experience during their train journey. They had no food and water. Out of frustration, some chose to walk along the railway track and got killed."
He maintained that the Centre could have prepared a comprehensive plan before declaring the nationwide lockdown.
He also held that the Centre's callousness is responsible for spreading the infection. "When Mamata Banerjee had requested the Centre to take steps to seal the airports to stop the inflow of people
from foreign countries where thousands of COVID 19 positive cases had been detected, the Centre looked the other way and finally took the steps but by then it was too late and the disease had spread."
He added that the functioning of the Centre shows that it is suffering from "indecision and lack of cooperation and does not have preparedness to combat the ongoing situation due to the COVID- 19 pandemic". He said: "Decisions are being taken without assessing their consequences."