In the midst of the country’s fight against the Wuhan coronavirus, instead of joining hands with the government in taming the contagion, Congress leaders are busy lying, peddling propaganda and nitpicking to undermine the centre’s efforts to contain the virus from spreading its fatal claws. Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala today brazenly lied through his teeth about the total number of tests conducted to ascertain coronavirus infection in the country.
Following PM Modi’s 7-point message to the nation earlier this morning, Surjewala took to Twitter to weigh in a bunch of his ideas to be followed by the government instead of following the Prime Minister’s suggestions. Surjewala asserted that the principal way of stopping the ominous spread of the virus is through augmenting the testing capability of the country. While there is a grain of truth in Surjewala’s assertion, however, he used wrong figures in his tweet to cast India’s testing capacity in the poor light. Randeep Surjewala said that as of 14th April 2020, India has conducted only 14,376 tests for coronavirus so far. This averages at 197 tests per day in the last 73 days. Furthermore, he enquired what is PM’s plan to increase the testing.
However, the total number of tests conducted in India till Sunday, April 12, 2020, as per official figures, were 2,06,212. But, since Surjewala was predisposed towards criticising the government, he lowballed the total number of testing and arbitrarily came up with a deceptively low number-14,376, to needlessly mount an attack on the government and corner them on their readiness and capacity to carry out widespread testing.
Live Updates: Till Sunday, 2,06,212 #coronavirus tests have been conducted in the country, according to ICMR.
— Outlook Magazine (@Outlookindia) April 13, 2020
Follow updates here: https://t.co/fD1Jn7tvpb#COVID19 #CoronavirusPandemic #CoronavirusOutbreak #Covid19India pic.twitter.com/GC1FKKR58t
Perhaps, when mindful Twitter users pointed out the glaring error in Surjewala’s post, he was compelled to delete his tweet. However, undaunted by the criticism from the users for maligning the government with fake figures of testing, an unabashed Surjewala posted another tweet, this time updating the numbers to 2,17,554, but his assertion remained the same.
मा: मोदीजी,
— Randeep Singh Surjewala (@rssurjewala) April 14, 2020
देश आज इन 7 बातों/सप्तपदी पर रोडमैप चाहता है-:
1. कोरोना की रोकथाम का एक मात्र रास्ता है-टेस्टिंग। 1 फ़रवरी से 13 अप्रैल, 2020 तक, यानी 72 दिनों में देश में केवल 2,17,554 कोरोना टेस्ट हुए। औसत 3,021 टेस्ट प्रतिदिन है।
टेस्ट कई गुना बढ़ाने की क्या योजना है? https://t.co/tURnSITJ0A
While there is always a scope of improvement in a nation’s response to a pandemic of such immensity, Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala’s inveterate habit of denigrating the government betrays that no matter how much the government ramps up its testing capability, he would nevertheless criticise them, either by conjuring up fake figures or by using the actual ones, but the propaganda against the government will be carried out in earnest.
