Chidambaram slams Centre on COVID rise & economic fallout, predicts 65L cases by month-end

Former Finance Minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram has once again targeted the Centre over the decline in GDP and the ongoing economic crisis. Chidambaram hit out at the Finance Ministry over the "unprecedented negative growth" in first quarter of 2020-21.

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Chidambaram had earlier also slammed Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman over her remark calling COVID-19 as an 'act of God and that the economy will see a contraction in the current fiscal. He had then questioned the finance minister on the economic crisis which prevailed before the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country. 

The finance minister has been criticised by the opposition over the steep decline in GDP numbers due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the economy. The provisional estimates of GDP were released by the government on Monday for the quarter April-June 2020 (Q1 FY21). The data revealed that the Indian economy had contracted by 23.9% in the April to June quarter. This marked the first contraction in more than 40 years as COVID-19 pandemic compressed consumer demand and private investments, the government data revealed. The National Statistical Office (NSO) said gross value added (GVA) came in at minus 22.8%.

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Chidambaram also targeted the Centre over COVID-19 situation in the country as India records mammoth rise with the daily surge of over 80,000 fresh infections taking the cumulative total above 40 lakhs cases on September 5. He has predicted the caseload of COVID-19 in the country to touch 65 lakhs by the end of this month.

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COVID-19 situation in India

Although India records a heavy surge in the number of COVID-19 cases in the country due to massive-scale testing, the country has also reported an increase in the recovery of the Covid-19 cases. Due to the vigilant 'testing-tracking-treatment' strategy of the Centre, the recovery rate has improved to 77.23% and the fatality rate has gone down to 1.73%. Even the percentage of active cases is reduced to 21.04%, making India better poised in its fight against the deadly pandemic than many other countries.

Currently, India's COVID-19 tally stands at 40,23,179 with a single-day spike of 86,432 new cases & 1,089 deaths reported in the last 24 hours. While there are 8,46,395 active cases in the country, 31,07,223 have been cured/discharged/migrated & 69,561 have died due to the virus, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

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