New Delhi: All power cannot be concentrated in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), and India will lose in its fight against Covid-19 if the Narendra Modi government does not devolve powers to chief ministers and district magistrates, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said Friday.
Addressing the media through video conferencing, Gandhi said, “If we keep this fight only in PMO, we will lose; PM must devolve power,” he said, adding that the Prime Minister needs to talk to chief ministers as a partner and consult them instead of centralising all power.
He further said the Centre also needs to be transparent about its lockdown exit strategy.
Citing the example of how districts are classified into red, green and orange zones, depending on the volume of cases, Gandhi said the government needed to give district magistrates authority to take a call in this regard.
“The information about zones is with the state-level leaders and collectors. This information is not available with the Centre,” he said.
“The Prime Minister has his own style, but in my view, in such a situation, a strong Prime Minister along with a lot of strong chief ministers and a lot of strong collectors are needed,” he further said. “I want us to tackle the disease at the local level itself.
“I want a strong Indian leader to stand in front of this disease — be it a collector or a farmer,” he said, urging the Centre to not centralise power.
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District classification
Gandhi said that the Centre needs to devolve powers to the DMs and states to classify the zones into Red, Orange and Green. Since this information is not available with the Centre, it should give DMs the free hand to classify their districts into the three zones on the basis of local factors and information.
The issue has been taken up by different Congress CMs with the party.
“Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has told us that some of the red zones (classified by the Centre) are actually green, and some of the green zones are actually red … The information with the Centre is wrong,” he said.
Punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh, for example, has earlier said that the decision on classification of zones as red, orange or green should be left to the states. The states, he said, should in turn authorise the deputy commissioners to demarcate the districts on the basis of ground realities.
Gandhi also said that chief ministers are not getting their due money from the Centre.
“We have received inputs that BJP chief ministers also have the same feeling,” he said.
Further, he said that his party has constantly been giving suggestions to the Centre, even though the BJP government has a tendency of not talking to the Opposition.
Gandhi also referred to the NYAY scheme, the Congress’ proposal that promised basic income of Rs 72,000 annually for each poor family if his party had come to power in the 2019 general election, and said it needed to be implemented without any delay to build a protective wall for the country’s poorest.
Also read: Rahul Gandhi’s NYAY raises too many questions & is not the answer to ending poverty