The Congress on Tuesday wondered whether BJP president J.P. Nadda wrote to Sonia Gandhi to turn the “government-versus-people” narrative into the usual partisan feud at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to have no answers to questions raised by healthcare experts, the international media and Indian doctors as well as Covid patients.

“We didn’t write to J.P. Nadda. It is not a political issue. It is not a BJP-versus-Congress battle. What is Nadda trying to do? Is he desperate to change the government-versus-people narrative? Why did the Prime Minister not answer the letters written by Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi? Letters written by our leaders were based on conversations with global experts and leaders who have decades of administrative experience,” Congress general secretary Ajay Maken said.

Nadda had accused the Congress of “spreading negativity and panic” on Covid and warned that the Opposition party’s leaders would be remembered for “duplicity and pettiness”. Maken asserted that the BJP was politicising the national tragedy while the Congress was only observing “rajdharma as the Opposition” in a democracy by giving constructive suggestions.

“Forget the Congress, what have the two most reputed medical and science journals — The Lancet and Nature — said about the Modi government’s Covid management? What is the international media saying?” Maken asked.

He recalled how The Lancet, while warning of a “self-inflicted catastrophe”, had asked Modi to accept mistakes. Maken said: “The world is saying India is hiding the (actual) numbers of infections and deaths. The Indian Medical Association, which has three lakh doctors as members, has said they are not being consulted.

“The Covid task force did not meet for months. The government ignored a parliamentary standing committee alert on an oxygen crisis. Crematoriums don’t have space. Now the Ganga (where bodies of the Covid dead are being dumped) is telling us how pathetic the situation is. Why is Nadda not dealing with these issues? His letter betrays lack of concern, absence of remorse,” the Congress leader added.

Nadda’s assertions fly in the face of the stark reality as the screams and miseries of the people across the country barely need any Congress propaganda to drive home the grim message.

There is a deluge of tell-tale evidence — hundreds of patients have died in hospitals because of disruptions in oxygen supply, thousands are seen everyday struggling for hospital admission and oxygen, mass funeral pyres are burning incessantly and around four lakh new cases are being reported daily.

Former finance minister P. Chidambaram countered the BJP chief by advising him to read what Nobel laureates Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee and Esther Duflo had written in The New York Times instead of sending an ill-informed letter to Sonia.

Writing under the headline “India’s problem is now the world’s problem”, the couple explained how a lockdown was imposed without planning last year when the virus arrived and now there was reluctance to impose another lockdown when the pathogen was spreading wildly because of concerns about the economy. They argued that nobody was tracking the second wave seriously.

Maken said Nadda should have dealt with specific suggestions given by Congress leaders instead of launching a political diatribe.

Pointing to disconcerting facts that show the Modi government in poor light, Maken said: “Countries like the US, the UK, Germany, Japan and even Brazil started placing orders for vaccines between May and September last year while we placed our first order in January this year….India needs to vaccinate at least 90 crore people and at the current rate this exercise will need three to four years. We have covered only 17 crore people so far (with at least one dose). The US and China will vaccinate their entire population in a few months.”

Asked about Nadda’s claim that even Congress-appointed Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar had acknowledged the need for a new Parliament building and hence the attack on the Central Vista project was hypocritical, Maken said: “It is a question of priority and timing. Is this the time to spend Rs 20,000 crore on a new Parliament building and residential complexes for ministers when we are unable to give free vaccines to the poor, to give food and medicine to the poor, when millions have lost their jobs and the economy is in tatters?”