Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister, Jai Ram Thakur today said the corona pandemic has proved political farsightedness and strong will of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in effectively tackling the crisis as when even most powerful nations of the world were struggling to check the spread of COVID-19, the situation of India was far better than most of these countries due to timely decision on lockdown.

Addressing a virtual rally of Jaswan Pragpur BJP Mandal of Kangra district through Video Conferencing from Shimla today, Thakur said the world has been adversely affected due to the corona virus and India is no exception.

The CM said that this virus has forced us to rethink and reframe our strategies and developmental policies and programmes. He said that lakhs of people of the state, particularly students were stranded in different parts of the country at the initial stage of the lockdown and most of them were in distress.

“It was the moral duty of the state government to bring back these students and people of the state. The government brought back such people by buses and 13 special trains. This resulted in a sharp increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in the state, but at the same time we could not afford to leave the people of the state to their fate,”he added.

Thakur said that all the people coming from other parts of the country have been kept under institutional or home quarantine. They were not allowed to mingle with the local population and all the cases of COVID-19 were either those with travel history or their primary contacts. He said that the overall situation of the state was far better than all the neighbouring states.

“The small initiatives taken by the state government have been lauded even by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Active Case Finding Campaign launched by the state government has helped the State in identifying people with ILI symptoms and with chronic illness,” he said.

Thakur thanked the people of Jaswan Pragpur for contributing about Rs. 35 lakh towards HP SDMA COVID-19 State Disaster Response Fund. He said that, in addition to this, the people of the area have also prepared and distributed about 65,000 masks to the people of the area, besides distributing about 1800 Modi Kits to the needy. He assured the people of the area that paucity of funds would not come in the way of development of the area. He said that adequate funds would be released so that developmental projects were completed in a stipulated time period.

Union Minister of State for Finance and Corporate Affairs Anurag Thakur said that the six year tenure of the Narendra Modi government has paved the way for a new, strong and vibrant India. He said that the Union Government has announced a Rs. 20 lakh crore economic package, which was the biggest economic package of independent India. He said that this package envisages economic support to every section of the society for their economic revival. He also detailed various developmental programmes launched by the Union government.