While Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday (April 18) called off all his election related engagements in West Bengal due to steep rise in corona virus cases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address six rallies for the next three phases. Union home minister Amit Shah will be speaking at 10 such public gatherings while West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress supremo will attend 17 such programmes.
Rahul, through a tweet, called on the leaders of other parties too to avoid public meetings.
While the Prime Minister and home minister had to travel a long distance from New Delhi to attend such political events, Mamata had to campaign in her own state as she is based in Kolkata.
As the electioneering time has been curtailed to 10 in the morning and 7:00 in the evening the candidates are getting less time to meet the voters. So far three candidates have lost their lives due to COVID-19—two of them are of Congress and one of Revolutionary Socialist Party, a Left Front constituent. Thus, all the three who died are from Samyukt Morcha.
Rahul had visited only Darjeeling district on April 14 to campaign for his party’s candidate.
Meanwhile, Union minister and BJP leader Gajendra Singh Shekhawat mocked Rahul for cancelling his election meetings and asked as to how many rallies he was going to address and how many people were supposed to attend it.
The minister said that Rahul had to cancel all his election programs in West Bengal as it would have been humiliating for him because of poor turnout.
