Shiv Sena won't yield credit for Dharavi's Covid fight to RSS; says 'focus on UP & Bihar'

Shiv Sena on Monday targeted the Central government over the handling of COVID-19 pandemic. Sena's party mouthpiece Saamana has alleged that new propaganda being spread that Dharavi's COVID-19 situation is improved only because of RSS.

In the op-ed piece, Sena advised the Centre to pay more attention to states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Sena opined, "despite the appropriate handling of COVID-19 in Uttar Pradesh as PM Modi claimed, the state had to undergo lockdown again, which means something has gone wrong."

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The article also targeted leader of opposition in Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis by saying that Fadnavis is travelling across Maharashtra and trying to find faults in Maharashtra government's way of handling COVID-19 and giving lectures on how the government has failed in handling the pandemic.

"He should also visit Dharavi and see the successful work done by the state administration, however there is a new propaganda being spread that Dharavi's improvement in COVID-19 situation is only due to RSS. This is an insult to the doctors and other frontline workers," the Op-ed piece wrote.

"The improvement in Dharavi is a community success and of the state machinery, and more so the BMC," the piece claimed.

"The presence of RSS is also found in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Pune, Pimpri-Chinchwad etc, then why are they not effective there?," questioned Sena while targetting Fadnavis.

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The political tug of war with regards to Dharavi comes after the World Health Organisation (WHO) praised the efforts taken to contain the spread of the COVID-19 in Dharavi which is one of the world's largest slums. Dharavi, which is located in India's financial capital Mumbai, is spread over an area of 2.5 square kilometres and has a population of 650,000 which is living in extremely close proximity with each other and having narrow lanes and open sewers, which in turn increases the chances of the spread of COVID-19.

"And some of these examples are Italy, Spain and South Korea, and even in Dharavi - a densely packed area in the megacity of Mumbai," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said earlier this month while making a point that even if the outbreak is very intense, it can still be brought back under control.

Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said that 82 per cent of patients in Dharavi have recovered from the infection, bringing down the number of active cases to only 166.

"Dharavi is an inspiration for the world on how to curb the spread of a pandemic," he said in a statement.