Mandaviya's mendacious meddling with Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra

The Union health minister's advisory is political in nature and meant to light a long fuse of a blame game should the nation witness another Covid-19 wave

It is decidedly odd that Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya should write to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot to either follow "all Covid-19 guidelines" during his Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY) or suspend it in "national interest."

Odd because Parliament is holding its sittings without social distancing, the country is celebrating Christmas, bazaars are full of customers looking for festive season deals, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has ongoing "Yatras" of its own in Karnataka and Rajasthan.

The Congress Party has raised questions about whether Madaviya's letters could be politics masquerading as public health policy.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has alleged that the BJP is attempting to "disturb the Bharat Jodo Yatra, fearing the increasing public support (for it)."

Questioning the health minister's motives further, he pointed out, "Two days ago, the Prime Minister held a rally in Tripura where no Covid protocol was followed" and concluded, "If the purpose of the Union Health Minister was not political, his concern is justified, (and) then he should have written the first letter to the Prime Minister."

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Mandaviya claims that his advice to Rahul Gandhi to suspend the BJY in "national interest" follows from people writing to him that the BJY was not following Covid protocols. However, there have been no Covid protocols in place ever since the BJY began. All three individuals who wrote to Mandaviya are BJP MPs from Rajasthan, from his own admission and likely to be partisan.

Perhaps a similar advisory was not thought to be issued when the BJY was South of the Vindhyas because the BJP does not have much of a stake there except in Karnataka. The "cow belt" of North India is the key to the BJP's staying power and hence the need felt by the ruling party to set hurdles in the way of the of the Congress mobilisation.

It is also interesting to note that the first BF.7 strain of the Omicron mutant of Covid-19 was found for the first time in India earlier this year in Gujarat, the prime minister and the health minister's home state.

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Its presence in a patient was announced on October 14 by the Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre. By then, the World Health Organisation had already issued a warning about the highly infectious BF.7 version of the virus – first discovered in China's Inner Mongolia region – and it had already led to the beginning of severe lockdowns in China.

There is no evidence in the public domain that the Gujarat government made any attempt at contact-tracing to find out how the variant infected the victim in the state. Yet the government went ahead and held legislative elections in the state without any kind of advisory to the political parties or the people, and there was no Covid outbreak in Gujarat.

It is more than evident that the Health Minister's advisory is political in nature and meant to light a long fuse of a blame game should the nation actually witness another Covid-19 wave. His letter to Rajasthan Chief Minister was sent after the BJY had already left the state and entered Haryana.

Logically, the advisory should have gone to Haryana's Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, as the BJY is currently traversing through his state. Another advisory should have gone warning Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Uttar Pradesh, where the BJY will traverse after January 4 in the new year. Both Haryana and UP have BJP governments, and the minister would have found ready recipients for his advice if, indeed, it was a health advisory with no political motives.

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This is not the first time that the BJP and its government at the Centre have used the Covid pandemic selectively to thwart expressions of public discontent with its policies. It has learnt from authoritarian regimes the world over to use fear of the pandemic as a political instrument, placing political goals above public health objectives, to silence its critics. India joined the inglorious list of countries ranging from China, Thailand, Cambodia, Venezuela, Bangladesh and Turkey in doing this.

It might be pertinent to recall how Covid regulations were used to disband the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests overnight. It was remarked at the time that despite the rampant spread of the virus, Parliament was not prorogued to enable the Madhya Pradesh legislative Assembly to function till March 23, 2020, so that the Congress government could be toppled and a BJP chief minister installed.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan was installed on March 23 as chief minister after engineering the resignation and defection of legislators loyal to Jyotiraditya Scindia, and a nationwide lockdown was imposed a day later on March 24. The Covid-wave that swept the country also did not stop Prime Minister Modi from addressing election rallies in West Bengal, Assam and UP.

Why is the BJP government trying to abort the BJY in North India? There is no doubt that the BJY and Rahul Gandhi are attracting large crowds. What's more, because of the massive human and infrastructural enterprise that the BJY is, the Congress party has started getting media space which it was denied earlier. Now even the 'captive media' has to report on the BJY to retain its credibility. Perhaps the BJP can sense its impact on the public mood and has been forced to take pre-emptive action. Surely Mandaviya could not have set the advisory off his own bat?

Does the BJP not know that the public can see through this game? It certainly does, but it also seems confident that its propaganda machine can easily overcome all reason and rationality.