After being slammed by Singapore officials and the Ministry of External Affairs, the AAP government continues to further its claim of the Covid-19 ‘Singapore variant’ in India.
Coming out in support of his party leader, Delhi Health Minister Satyendra Jain said, “Wrong to say, there is no #COVID19 strain particular to Singapore. There are many strains in India, Will give clarification on the Singapore strain soon. But we assure you there is a new strain in India.”
https://twitter.com/CNNnews18/status/1394892204171276288?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwDelhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia too has parroted the same narrative, counter-attacking the central government over ‘focusing on Singapore’. Deflecting from the topic, Sisodia attacked the BJP for not focusing enough on the issue, despite the fact that neither Kejriwal nor his ministers Jain and Sisodia, presented any factual evidence of the existence of a ‘Singapore strain’.
After unnecessarily creating confusion and dragging the name of a friendly neighbourhood nation over unverified claims, AAP leaders continue to play politics, using the narrative for political attacks on the BJP.
https://twitter.com/TimesNow/status/1394930720590557184?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwThe undeterred reaction comes as a shocker after Singapore took strong objection to Delhi Chief Minister’s unscrupulous claims citing it as ‘very dangerous.’
Arvind Kejriwal had spread misinformation
On Tuesday, Kejriwal had taken to Twitter to claim that a new variant of Covid-19 was found in Singapore and appealed to Indian government to shut down flights to and from Singapore to not let the ‘new variant’ reach India.
Hours after Kejriwal put out unverified claims pertaining to the so-called Singapore strain, the Singapore government refuted all the claims made by Arvind Kejriwal and stressed that no new coronavirus strain had been detected in the city-state.
https://twitter.com/SGinIndia/status/1394705073666543624?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwMEA said ‘Delhi CM does not speak for India’
The official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs revealed that the Singapore government had called the High Commission raising a strong objection to Kejriwal’s statement.
MEA had made it clear that Kejriwal has no authority to either pronounce Covid variants or decide India’s civil aviation policy.
https://twitter.com/MEAIndia/status/1394884595745660930?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwUnion Minister Dr S Jaishankar too responded sternly to Kejriwal’s unverifiable claims.
https://twitter.com/DrSJaishankar/status/1394885678899482631?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwSingapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan too took to Twitter to suggest that politicians should stick to facts and slammed Kejriwal’s statement reiterating that there is “no Singapore variant.”
Kejriwal had spread multiple misinformations in tweet. Apart from claiming about the ‘Singapore strain’ he had also asked the government to cancel flights to the city-state. Civil Aviation minister Hardeep S Puri had clarified that there are no civilian flights operational between India and Singapore since March 2020.