A joint letter by 12 Opposition parties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, 12 May, said that the COVID-19 pandemic in India “has assumed unprecedented dimensions of a human catastrophe” and demanded action on several fronts such as expansion of vaccine production and procurement and the repeal of the Centre’s new farm laws.
The letter has been signed by Opposition leaders such as Sonia Gandhi, HD Deve Gowda, Sharad Pawar, Uddhav Thackeray, Mamata Banerjee, MK Stalin, Hemant Soren, Farooq Abdullah, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, D Raja, and Sitaram Yechury.
Saying that despite the parties, individually or collectively, having drawn the government’s attention to several issues, no action had been taken on these fronts, the letter demanded that measures on some fronts be “undertaken on a war footing” by the Centre.