The Congress on Tuesday urged the government to send enough testing kits to the states so that the true extent of the spread of the coronavirus could be gauged, apart from arranging for personal protection equipment for health professionals.

Refusing to be drawn into the debate over the PM CARES Fund when the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund already existed, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said at a media conference via video conference: “This is not the time to suspect the intentions of the government…. At present, the entire focus should be on checking the spread of the virus and providing relief to the poor displaced by the lockdown.”

While former finance minister P. Chidambaram has repeatedly questioned the government’s management of the pandemic, Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi has described the treatment of migrant workers as “criminal”.

Chidambaram pointed to the government’s failure to deliver on the promise of financial aid. He tweeted: “Here is a ground zero report from a clutch of panchayats in Tiruvarur district in Tamil Nadu. Each panchayat has a few small villages. No one in the villages has got any part of the money announced by the central government and the Tamil Nadu government.”

He added: “If this is so in a reasonably governed state like Tamil Nadu, imagine what the situation will be in the poorly governed states. The central government was totally unprepared before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the lockdown. What is worse, there is total mismanagement of the situation post-lockdown.”

But the official Congress spokesperson’s briefing was cautious and subdued. Tewari repeated several times that the intention was not to be critical, saying: “If we step into Stage III, when community transmission starts, the consequences could be dreadful. So we demand that the government learn from the mistakes committed so far and arrange for testing kits to enhance testing. States should be given kits in large numbers; we have to find out what is the scope of the spread. There was enough time to arrange for PPE (personal protection equipment). China notified WHO on December 31 itself (about the novel coronavirus). But we are in for a long haul and all the arrangements should be done without any further delay.”

Tewari iterated the Congress’s oft-repeated demands for special measures for harvesting and procurement of crop, fearing an adverse impact on India’s food security.

“It is a huge problem. Even the last kharif crop has not been fully disposed of; paddy is still lying with the farmers. FCI godowns are fully packed. In 2019-20, 117.47 million tonnes of paddy were produced. The storage capacity is 75.85 million tonnes.

“Now the advanced estimate of rabi crop is around 152.70 million tonnes. The problem is harvesting as workers have gone back. After harvesting, packing, loading and storage are another problem. Mandis are closed. Small farmers have no storage facilities. The government should deal with this crisis that will unfold over the next 15 days,” the Congress spokesperson said.