Congress leader and former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Saturday urged Chief Ministers to convey to the PM that ‘livelihood of the poor is as important as human lives.’Chidambaram, a former Union Finance Minister, tweeted: ‘Chief Ministers Captain Amarinder Singh, Ashok Gehlot, Bhupesh Baghel, V Narayansamy, Uddhav Thackeray and Edappadi K Palaniswami should tell the Prime Minister today that just as lives are important, livelihood of the poor is also important.’
The first four are Congress leaders and CMs of Punjab, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Puducherry respectively. The latter two, meanwhile, are from the Shiv Sena and AIADMK respectively and CMs of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, in that order.
Chidambaram, meanwhile, further questioned if the state can just stand by and watch the poor go hungry, stating that they had lost their jobs or self-employment in the last 18 days and also exhausted their meagre savings.
Many of them, he said, were standing in lines for food.
‘CMs should demand that cash be transferred to every poor family immediately. Remonetise the poor should be their unanimous demand,’ Chidambaram concluded.
Notably, today is day 18 of the 21-day nationwide lockdown, which was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24. However, with the number of COVID-19 positive cases seeing a dramatic rise, many states have suggested that the lockdown be extended until at least the end of the month.Dailyhunt
