India on Monday took strong exception to an article published in The Australian , which attributed the devastating second wave of coronav...
India on Monday took strong exception to an article published in The Australian, which attributed the devastating second wave of coronavirus in the country to the missteps and complacency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In a letter to The Australian’s Editor-in-Chief Christopher Doe, the Indian High Commission in Canberra called the article “completely baseless, malicious and slanderous”, and urged the newspaper to publish a rejoinder.
“It appears that the report has been written only with the sole objective of undermining the universally acclaimed approach taken by the Government of India to fight against the deadly global pandemic, at this decisive moment,” it said.
Written by Philip Sherwell, the article in question was originally published in The Times on Saturday with the headline, “Modi leads India out of lockdown and into a Covid apocalypse”. It was reproduced in the Australian daily a day later with the title: “Modi leads India into a viral apocalypse”.
Among other things, the article pointed to the “hubris”, “nationalist politics”, slow vaccine roll-out, an ill-equipped health system, and “promotion of the economy over containment” as some of the immediate factors behind the crisis in India, according to NDTV.
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