Following up on a request from the Central government, social media site Twitter has withheld tweets "critical of India's handling of the coronavirus outbreak". According to a report by news agency Reuters, Twitter has withheld some of the tweets— from MLA Revnath Reddy, West Bengal minister Moloy Ghatak, filmmaker Avinash Das, and others—after a legal request by the GoI.
The number of coronavirus cases in India have been surging, with record number of cases being registered daily. To compound matters, hospitals across the country have been suffering from a massive dearth of oxygen.
The main opposition parties had blamed the BJP at the Centre for the fiasco. Congress highlighted a shortage of COVID-19 vaccines in the country on Saturday with party leader Rahul Gandhi asking the Centre to focus on the issue, instead of "spending on PR and unnecessary projects".
Pointing out that only 1.4 per cent of the country's population has been vaccinated so far, Gandhi, in a tweet, said "India needs vaccines" and shared a graph showing that the US has vaccinated 26.5 per cent of its population and the UK 15.9 per cent.
In another tweet, he asked the Centre to focus on vaccines, oxygen and other health services amid the COVID-19 pandemic, instead of "spending on PR and unnecessary projects". "This crisis will deepen in the coming days. The country has to be prepared to deal with this. The current plight is unbearable!" the former Congress chief said.
Senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram also pointed towards the shortage of vaccines and warned the government of more protests if people were turned away by hospitals. He welcomed the decision to vaccinate all citizens above the age of 18 years from May 1. "However, we have to caution the government that this decision brings with it huge responsibilities," the former Union minister wrote on Twitter. "The government is standing [not helplessly] and silently endorsing the blatant profiteering and exploitation by the two manufacturers. Why is the government not invoking the provision of 'compulsory licensing'?
