No time to play politics, says Minister Pokhriyal over Rahul Gandhi's remarks on lockdown

Union HRD Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal on Thursday hit out at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for slamming the central government over the extension of lockdown, saying this is not the right time to do "politics".

"Those who are commenting on the government should avoid doing this. The country needs to be united in its fight against COVID-19," Pokhriyal said while speaking to .

"I humbly request to those people who sometimes speak in a light manner. This is not the right time to do politics and the country's focus should be to secure the lives of its citizens," the Union Minister added.

While addressing a press conference yesterday, Rahul Gandhi had said that lockdown is not the solution for battling coronavirus and suggested that the Centre should aggressively go for testing and use it strategically.

The former Congress president also claimed that the virus will restart its work after the country comes out of lockdown.

"This virus has become a global crisis, but India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done well as compared to other countries like the United States and Italy, which are said to be the most developed nations in terms of health infrastructure," Pokhriyal said.

"Our PM has shown his strong determination in the fight against coronavirus. He took several steps and made appeals to the people and in return got tremendous support from them," the Union Minister added.

The Centre on Tuesday decided to extend lockdown till May 3. The Prime Minister said that the integrated and holistic approach helped India to handle the situation properly.

( With inputs from ANI )

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