New Delhi: Senior Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the report of The New York Times that claims the โIndian government was stalling the efforts by the World Health Organization to publish its estimate on excess Covid deaths.โ
According to the report, the WHO estimate will show that the death toll in India related to Covid disease cases is almost eight times the official numbers.
Taking to Twitter, Rahul Gandhi wrote that PM Modi does not speak the truth, and no does he allows others to say the truth. He added that his earlier claim of 40 lakh deaths in India due to the virus has been proved. He urged the government to provide โน4 lakh as compensation to families of those who died of Covid-19.
โModi Ji does not speak the truth, he does not let (others) speak it,โ the Lok Sabha member from Wayanad wrote in Hindi on Twitter along with a screenshot of the NYT article titled โIndia Is Stalling WHOโs Efforts to Make Global Covid Death Toll Publicโ.
โThey still lie that no one died of oxygen shortage! I had said earlier also โ 40 lakh Indians died, not 5 lakh, due to the governmentโs negligence in Covid. Please, Modi Ji โ give a compensation of โน4 lakh to every victimโs family,โ he added.
The WHOโs methodology for estimating the deaths caused by Covid-19 is objected by the government said the ministry of health and family welfare in a statement.
The ministry stated that the same mathematical model cannot be used to calculate the Covid mortalities for a large country like India and for other countries with a small population.
โIndiaโs basic objection has not been with the result (whatever they might have been) but rather the methodology adopted for the same.โ
โThe concern specifically includes on how the statistical model projects estimates for a country of geographical size & population of India and also fits in with other countries which have a smaller population,โ it added.
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