Bhubaneswar: A political blame game has broken out in Odisha after the State witnessed an explosive rise in the number of coronavirus cases following return of thousands of stranded migrants to Odisha from other states.
Senior Congress leader and MLA Suresh Routray threatened to launch a massive protest if any train carrying migrants from other states de-board in Khurda in coming days.
Referring to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, Rout said, "Henceforth if any train de-boards migrants in Khurda Road junction as per the permission of the State government, we will shut down the railway signal and stage dharna. Why would we die for them."
Similarly, Union Minister Jual Oram also attributed the rise in the coronavirus infections in the State to managerial defect of the government.
"Those entered Odisha during lockdown phase one and phase two should not have been allowed home quarantine. Had the government tightened the measures at that time, the government would have found better outcome now," the union minister said.
On the other hand, the State government said that the stranded Odias will be brought back to the State before the coronavirus outbreak becomes explosive.
According to official data, Odisha witnessed an explosive rise in the number of coronavirus cases from 170 on May 4 to 377 on May 10 after migrant workers started returning to the State. As many as 83 cases have been detected today.
With Angul reporting its first 15 cases & Boudh witnessing 3 maiden cases today, nCoV has now spread its tentacles to 21 districts of the State. Puri too reported novel-Coronavirus cases after a gap of nearly 5 weeks.
Of the total Covid-19 cases, Ganjam tops the chart with 125 cases followed by Jajpur (60), Khurda (50), Balasore (42), Bhadrak (31), Angul (15) and Sundergarh (13). The total active cases in the State now stand at 306 with 68 recoveries and three deaths.
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