At a time when the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra spares no stone unturned to pin the blame on the Modi government over the state’s Covid crisis, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) Commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal has praised the Central government for helping Mumbai tackle the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
In an interview with the Indian Express, the BMC Commissioner praised the Central government for its “great help” to Mumbai in its fight against the Chinese virus.
Talking about one night in April where Mumbai was facing an oxygen shortage, Chahal said, “I 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 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.”
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.”
In an interview with @IndianExpress, Sh Iqbal Singh Chahal, @mybmc Commissioner, recounts how the Government of India responded to his 🆘 signal within seconds that enabled #Mumbai to swing back on its feet during the 2nd wave of #CoronavirusPandemic https://t.co/Jy8rca2Txw
— Dr Harsh Vardhan (Modi Ka Pariwar) (@drharshvardhan) May 10, 2021
Chahal continued, “I worked under Gauba sir when I was joint secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs… I told him that Reliance Industries was just 16 hours away from Mumbai, in Jamnagar, and oxygen tankers can come from there every night. He said that such an allocation cannot be made just for one city. I told him that he can allocate it to Maharashtra and I will make sure that it comes to Mumbai city only… And then 125 MT of oxygen was allocated to us from Jamnagar. The same evening, tankers started moving and now the problem (of oxygen) has virtually become history in Mumbai because of great help from the Government of India.”
When asked about the ongoing Centre-State tussle amidst the second wave of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, Chahal 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.”
Interestingly, Chahal when asked about the Centre’s oxygen allocation strategy, launched an attack on the states. Commenting on the issue, the BMC Commissioner said, “The Government of India should not be blamed at all. If anybody has to be blamed, it is states.”
Chahal added, “As far as Maharashtra is concerned, we have been very honest with the figures. We were putting out figures of over 60,000 new positives every day, when the whole country was laughing at us. Many states of India were not even ready to admit how many cases they have. How does Centre allocate to them? One of our neighbouring states had 6,000 cases when we had 60,000 cases. But I’m sure if they had tested properly, they would also have 60,000 cases… Now, how does Centre allocate them equal amount of oxygen like us? So, when states have only 1,000 or 2,000 cases, their allocation will be very poor. If allocation is poor, people are going to suffer.”
These are unprecedented times, that require effective Centre-State coordination to win the battle against the virus. Chahal has punctured the claims of the MVA leaders who continue to pin the blame of the worsening situation of Covid in the state on the Central government. One fears for Chahal’s well being now, as the MVA is not known to be tolerant to contrarian views.
