Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan singled out non-BJP ruled states, particularly Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, for “politicizing” the pandemic and berated them for not doing enough to control the spread of coronavirus cases.
While the Opposition-ruled states are indeed among the worst affected — Maharashtra, Kerala, Delhi, Chhattisgarh stand out — data shows that there is hardly any state that can claim to be in a comfortable situation.
The spread of the disease has been politics-agnostic. Karnataka, a BJP-ruled state, has the third-highest caseload in the country. It also reported the third-highest number of deaths, after Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Incidentally, the BJP is AIADMK’s ally which rules Tamil Nadu.
Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh, again ruled by the BJP, Union Health Minister said
Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh, again ruled by BJP, are now among the top five contributors of new cases these days. Goa, a BJP-ruled state, has higher deaths per million population than even Maharashtra. The same is true of Ladakh as well. Himachal Pradesh fares worse than Kerala on this same metric.
There are several indicators on which BJP-ruled states are performing as bad, if not worse, than states ruled by opposition parties.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, for example, pulled up Chhattisgarh for being “heavily dependent” on rapid antigen tests and suggested. It could have contributed to the disproportionately high number of deaths in the state in the last few weeks.
But Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, two states with the highest number of tests, have also been relying mostly on rapid antigen tests.
In Maharashtra or Tamil Nadu, two states have done a comparable number of tests. More than 80 percent of tests have been to carry out using the RT-PCR method. In UP and Bihar, this proportion is well below 50 percent.