As the country continues to battle the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) led by Amit Shah has been working round the clock throughout the lockdown, constantly coordinating with the state and Union Territories in order to ensure that all bottlenecks coming in the way during the lockdown period were eradicated on a real-time basis.
While the Union Ministers of State for Home Affairs- Nityanand Rai and G. Kishan Reddy have been taking turns to keep things going at the MHA which serves as the nerve centre during the ongoing lockdown, Amit Shah has himself been actively involved in taking charge of affairs at the MHA.
Shah hasn’t been holding Press Conferences, nor is he too visible amidst the ongoing lockdown, but he has been silently working from behind the curtains ensuring that things don’t go off tracks during this critical phase.
According to The Print, sources at the MHA said that the Union Home Minister has been coming to the office for the last 10 days, and he is no longer working from a control room at his residence.
Every day he reaches that the MHA office at the North Block at 8:30 AM and keeps working well beyond midnight, that is around 16 hours every single day.
From here, he issues all advisories, directions, guidelines issued by the Union Home Ministry, and also ensures smooth coordination between the Centre and the States.
An MHA source said, “At 8 am, he takes one meeting before starting from home and monitors what all is being reported across media sections from the control room at his residence. He reaches office at 8.30 am daily and has two meetings with Home Secretary A.K. Bhalla. He takes detailed feedback and also discusses the roadmap ahead.”
In fact, Amit Shah, who heads the nodal Ministry responsible for ensuring smooth implementation of the ongoing lockdown, has been able to take total control of the situation.
In fact, much before the lockdown was enforced when the samples of the first Wuhan virus cases in India were sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) which is located in Pune, ICMR had communicated its inability to enable more testing facilities however Amit Shah intervened.
Putting his foot down, the Union Home Minister is said to have told the ICMR to either include more testing facilities or else the responsibility to conduct the testing would be accorded to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
After his intervention, the ICMR expanded the number of laboratories that could conduct the COVID-19 tests.
It is the Union Home Ministry which has been deciding on the intensity of the lockdown, the services that will be allowed with the passage of the ongoing lockdown and further it will have to decide the exit plan insofar the ongoing lockdown is concerned.
The Ministry is making all necessary announcements, and the brainchild behind such decisions is, of course, Amit Shah. It was again due to his intervention that the Delhi Police upped the ante against the Northeast Delhi riots accused, and ensured that 800 goons involved in the deadly riots were arrested.
In West Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee government is facing allegations of hushing up Coronavirus deaths and confirmed cases, and here too it is the Union Home Ministry led by Amit Shah has clamped down upon the Mamata Banerjee government over mismanagement of the Pandemic and dilution of lockdown.
Similarly, when the TMC government in West Bengal created bottlenecks for the Inter-Ministerial Central Team (IMCT) in the state, it was again the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) which intervened.
Shah has thus been working from behind the curtains and keeping a tab on the Coronavirus situation and lockdown enforcement in the country. India has managed to enforce the lockdown successfully and keep the number of Coronavirus cases under control, and the credit for keeping things under check goes directly to the Union Home Minister Amit Shah.