While the Maharashtra government continued to blame the Centre for the rise in coronavirus positive cases in the state, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal has applauded the central government for spontaneously taking action on Mumbai’s Covid woes.
In an interview, Iqbal praised the Central government for its “great help” to Mumbai in its fight against the coronavirus.
Recounting the event on the intervening night of April 16-17 when oxygen crisis left them on edge. He said six hospitals were running out of oxygen and there were 168 patients but fortunately they were able to transfer all the patients safely and save 100% lives.
However, the event left him restless so he “sent messages to top functionaries of the Government of India, including the Cabinet Secretary, Home Secretary, Health Secretary… I sent another set of messages to the top eight leaders of Maharashtra, starting with the honourable CM. I said, this is not the end of the problem and this may happen again.”
Praising Rajiv Gauba, who was Chahal’s boss when both were in the Union Home Ministry, the Commissioner said he was quick to respond.
He added, “Within 15-20 seconds, I had an incoming call coming from the Cabinet Secretary, Rajiv Gauba. He told me, tell me what you want… I said we have to import oxygen into the state. I told him that we can’t manufacture oxygen at such short notice and that the turnaround time for oxygen coming from Haldia was around eight days.”
When he was asked whether there had been any issues because of the Centre-state tussle, as being seen in Delhi, Chahal said he had not had such problems and replied “Nobody found the Government of India not willing to help us. Even they have their own issues… As we are learning, even they were learning. So no such friction was there… For instance, when I requested the Cabinet Secretary to airlift (oxygen), he said we are looking into that but some issues are coming up. Later on I realised that you can’t lift up a full tanker, it can explode.”
Further, when he was asked to comment upon the oxygen allocation by the government he explicitly said, “Let me answer this question in a very strong manner. The Government of India should not be blamed at all. If anybody has to be blamed, it is states.”
“Many states of India were not even ready to admit how many cases they have. How does the Centre allocate to them?,” he added.
All these claims by Chahal comes when MVA (Maha Vikas Aghadi) leaders continue to pin the blame of the worsening situation of Covid in the state on the Central government.
