The President of Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, DK Shivakumar, on Thursday, June 24 directed party workers to go across the state and collect ‘exact data’ on the families affected by the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020, as part of an ‘outreach programme'. Speaking at a press conference, Shivakumar told reporters that Congress as the opposition party must uncover the real numbers and will make them available in the public domain.
Shivakumar also claimed that while the state government is reporting around 30,000 deaths due to COVID-19, the ground reality is entirely different, as several media reports show that COVID-19 fatalities have already crossed the one lakh mark in the state. "Several families have lost their sole earning members, but wrong data provided by the state government could deprive many of the legitimate compensation of Rs 1 lakh that was announced by Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa for such families,” he said.
"As the principal opposition party, we have to ensure that every family that lost its earning member gets the compensation," he added.
The KPCC chief said that through this campaign, Congress also aims to engage the party cadre in establishing contact with the target groups in the urban, semi-urban and rural areas. "This outreach programme will be carried out effectively by organising visits by the local leaders (at the district, block and taluka levels) to the homes of the pandemic-hit families," he said.
According to Shivakumar, the party aims to directly cover one crore plus households in Karnataka within 30 days.
In a report by TNM on June 16, it was shown that a total of 3,37,580 (3.37 lakh) deaths were reported from January 1 to June 15, 2021, which is much higher compared to the years before the pandemic. In 2019 the number of deaths was 2.35 lakh from January 1 to June 30, meaning, there is an increase of 1,02,429 deaths in 2021. At the time of writing the report, the official COVID-19 death toll was 21,048. This means that there were 81,381 surplus deaths in comparison to 2019 for approximately the same period.
With IANS inputs