Indian health minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Wednesday (21) wrote to Indian National Congress leader and parliamentarian Rahul Gandhi and Ashok Gehlot, the chief minister of the north-western state of Rajasthan, over Covid-19 norms in the opposition party's ongoing 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' (Unite India March) amid growing cases in neighbouring China and many other nations in the world.
Mandaviya on Wednesday chaired a meeting with senior government officials and experts to review the Covid-19 situation in India amid the sudden and rapid rise in cases elsewhere in the world.
Indian minister of state for health and family Welfare Bharati Pravin Pawar said the meeting was convened to discuss the situation of Covid-19 in other countries and what needs to be done for India.
In a letter written to Gandhi and Gehlot, Mandaviya said Covid-19 guidelines should be strictly maintained during the Congress's national march programme, including use of masks and sanitisers or else the programme be postponed. It also said that only people who have been vaccinated should take part in the Yatra which kicked off in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in September and will reach Jammu and Kashmir over a period of five months.
The march reached the northern state of Haryana, which is ruled by prime minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, on Wednesday.
“Only vaccinated people should participate in the Bharat Jodo Yatra. Follow covid rules or suspend yatra,” the health minister's letter said.
Mandaviya requested in the letter that if Covid-19 protocol can not be followed, then the 'Bharat Jodo Yatra' be postponed in the national interest, taking note of the country's public health emergency.
[With ANI inputs]
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