Chief Minister to attend PM's virtual meet on Covid situation

KOLKATA: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will attend the virtual meeting convened by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday to discuss the present Covid situation in different states. The meeting will begin at 11 am in which senior officers of the state government, including Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay, Home Secretary HK Dwivedi and Health Secretary NS Nigam will also be present.

This comes at the time when the Chief Minister has written at least five letters to the Prime Minister in relation to the fight against Covid pandemic. She wrote to the Prime Minister urging him to ensure adequate vaccine doses, oxygen supply and medicine for Covid patients. She had also placed a request to ensure free-of-cost vaccination for everyone in the country.

The state government had earlier expressed its reservation over the move of the Prime Minister holding a virtual meeting directly with state government officers and District Magistrates surpassing the Chief Minister and the Cabinet Ministers in connection with Covid pandemic. Trinamool Congress (TMC) has also criticised the move claiming it to be an infringement of the country's federal structure.

According to the sources, the Prime Minister was earlier scheduled to hold a meeting with the state Chief Secretary, other officers involved in the fight against Covid pandemic and District Magistrates of 10 districts — Howrah, Nadia, East Midnapore, Kolkata, Hooghly, Birbhum, West Burdwan, North and South 24-Parganas.

On the day when Banerjee was sworn in as the Chief Minister for the third consecutive term (May 5), she wrote to the Prime Minister requesting him to ensure free-of-cost Covid vaccine for all in the country, besides introducing a transparent policy for distribution of vaccine doses and oxygen to the states after a high-level meeting over the present Covid situation.

She had also accused the Centre of sending only 1.5 lakh vaccine doses to Bengal when it had sought three crore doses.

She had also written to the Prime Minister protesting against its decision to divert oxygen from Bengal to other states, including Uttar Pradesh when the need in Bengal had gone up to nearly 500 MT per day.