Rahul Gandhi, a leader of the Congress party, asserted on Sunday that the government’s negligence led to the deaths of at least 40 lakh people in India due to Covid-19. He called on the government to provide ₹4 lakh in compensation to each victim’s family. Gandhi shared a New York Times report stating that India is obstructing the World Health Organization’s (WHO) efforts to disclose the country’s Covid-19 death toll.
In a Hindi tweet, Gandhi accused Prime Minister Modi of not revealing the truth and preventing others from doing so. He criticized the government for denying deaths due to oxygen shortages, emphasizing that he had previously highlighted the underreporting of Covid-19 deaths. The Congress leader insisted that, contrary to the reported five lakh deaths by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the actual toll was 40 lakh.
The health ministry disputed the WHO’s estimation methodology, arguing that a uniform model cannot be applied to all countries, especially a large one like India. The WHO, using its approach, projected approximately 15 million global Covid-19 deaths by the end of 2021. The New York Times report alleged that the WHO’s estimate for India was around 40 lakh deaths, nearly eight times higher than the health ministry’s figures.
The health ministry responded to the report, titled ‘India Is Stalling WHO’s Efforts to Make Global Covid Death Toll Public,’ asserting that India had expressed concerns to the global health body about the methodology used on multiple occasions.
