Congress, BJP pushing Kerala to community spread, says CM Pinarayi Vijayan

He slams protests that violate physical-distancing norms

The police blocking Youth Congress and Muslim Youth League workers who protest against Speaker P. Sreeramakrishnan at the Collectorate in Malappuram on Saturday.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday accused Opposition parties of forsaking basic civic sense and acting in a reckless manner that nudged the State in the direction of an unmanageable COVID-19 community spread.

Mr. Vijayan launched a broadside against the Congress and the Bharathiya Janata Party for throwing physical-distancing norms to the wind by organising raucous street protests across Kerala for the second consecutive day on Saturday. The mobs could cause a troubling spike in SARS-CoV-2 infections. The unprotected activists who risked themselves in the open could become super spreaders and endanger their communities.

Mr. Vijayan said political parties should ruminate on the destruction wreaked by the virus on the population of developed countries. Doctors there grappled with an alarming death rate. They could not provide beds or ventilators to infected persons. Health workers had to allow the disease to take some persons so they could save a few others by rationing medicines and ventilators.

Hospitals became epicentres of infection. Death scythed through the population. Morgues overflowed with the dead. Mass burials were the norm, Mr. Vijayan said. “Do the Opposition parties want to precipitate such a disastrous situation in Kerala? Are they so indifferent to the danger to public health that lies ahead?,” he asked.

‘National adversity’

Mr. Vijayan asked the leadership of the Congress and the BJP to show more social responsibility and civic sense. “We are facing national adversity. Today is not the day for partisan politics. It is the time for unified action against the threat,” he said.

Mr. Vijayan said Congress and BJP leaders behaved as if they had some magical armour or talisman that protected them against the virus. He hoped better sense would prevail among the cadres of the Opposition parties. He said he wished they would desist for the time being from street protests wherein physical distancing was the primary causality.

The protesters had also put police officials on the front line of the State’s battle against the pandemic in peril. They had attempted to sabotage the State’s disease control protocol. The government respected the right of political parties to protest. It was against using law enforcement to stifle democratic freedom.

However, there was a time for electoral politics, he said.