'Rs 7,500/month per family ; 200 days work under MGNREGA': Sonia Gandhi lists Cong demands

With yet another set of demands made of the Centre amid the ongoing Coronavirus crisis in the country, Sonia Gandhi, interim chief of the Congress party, on Thursday said that the Central government must ensure the safety of migrants. In a video message to the people of the country, she said that her party is attempting to help the poor and the needy since the crisis began and that Congress has made several demands to the Centre. Sonia Gandhi also appealed to people to be a part of Congress' 'movement' to help the migrant workers.

The Congress chief enlisted her demands:  "We appeal to the Central government to aid the needy. We demand that the Centre provides every family Rs 7500/ month for six months. We also demand free and safe movement of migrants via trains and proper food facilities for them. We want that Centre should ensure 200 days guarantee work under MGNREGA. For MSME, and small industries, we want the Centre to not give them loan but financial aid so that jobs may be saved. We are repeating the demands again and again."

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This comes after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman under the Aatmanirbhar Bharat package announced that the government will now allocate an additional Rs 40,000 crores to MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) to provide a boost to employment. The existing allocation was Rs 61,000 crore, taking the total to Rs 101,000 crore. For MSMEs, the finance minister had announced a series of liquidity measures including collateral-free automatic loans worth Rs 3 lakh crore. Borrowers with up to Rs 25 crore outstanding and Rs 100 crore turnover will be eligible. These loans will have a four-year tenure and have a moratorium for 12 months on principal payment, as per minister's announcement. 

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Rahul Gandhi asks 'What is plan B?'; BJP responds

Earlier on Tuesday, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi issued a statement asking Centre what their 'plan B' is to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic in the country. The Congress MP from Wayanad claimed that the lockdown imposed by the Centre 60 days ago 'has not been able to defeat the virus' and that PM Modi and his advisors had 'underestimated' the scale of the pandemic. 

In response to Rahul Gandhi's allegations, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad gave a point-by-point reply emphasizing how India has been tackling the Coronavirus crisis which has made a worse impact in all the leading economies of the world.

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India's Covid-19 tally

The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 4,531 and the number of cases climbed to 1,58,333 in the country, registering an increase of 194deaths and 6,566 cases in the last 24 hours since 8 am, the Union Health Ministry said. The number of active COVID-19 cases stands at 86,110while 67,691 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said.

Of the 194 deaths reported, 105 were in Maharashtra, 23 in Gujarat, 15 in Delhi, 12 in Uttar Pradesh, eight in Madhya Pradesh, six each in Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal, three each in Karnataka and Rajasthan, two each in Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir and one each in Andhra Pradesh, Haryana and Kerala.

Of the total 4,531 fatalities, Maharashtra tops the tally with 1,897 deaths followed by Gujarat with 938 deaths, Madhya Pradesh with 313, Delhi with 303, West Bengal with 289, Uttar Pradesh with 182, Rajasthan with 173, Tamil Nadu with 133, Telangana with 63 and Andhra Pradesh with 58 deaths.

The death toll reached 47 in Karnataka and 40 in Punjab. Jammu and Kashmir have reported 26 fatalities due to the disease, Haryana has 18 deaths while Bihar has registered 15. Odisha and Kerala have reported seven deaths each, Himachal Pradesh five, while Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Chandigarh and Assam have recorded four deaths each so far.

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