A case has been registered against senior Congress leader Kamal Nath over his controversial remarks regarding Covid-19. The former Madhya Pradesh CM has been booked under section 188 (Disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) of the Indian Penal Code and section 54 (punishment for spreading false information) of the Disaster Management Act, 2005, for spreading misleading information over COVID-19.
Kamal Nath had sparked controversy by repeatedly using the term “Indian Corona” to refer to the pandemic during a media interaction on Friday. He said that ‘while we were saying Chinese Corona, now we are facing Indian Corona. Today UK has banned flights from India due to Indian Corona’.
Following the video of Kamal Nath’s comments had gone viral, BJP had slammed him, reminding that WHO has said that it does not associate variants of Coronavirus with any country. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had issued a statement earlier this month that using the term “Indian variant” to refer to the B.1.617 variant of the coronavirus is not correct, and had expressed concern over media reports using the term.
Earlier today, the Madhya Pradesh BJP had filed a complaint against Kamal Nath with the Bhopal Crime Branch, demanding registration of a case against him, for both his recent controversial comments, the comment over Coronavirus and asking his party workers to set the country on fire over farmer protests.
Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan had also strongly reacted to Kamal Nath’s comments, wondering whether the comments amount to sedition. “Will this not hurt the country’s respect and does this not amount to sedition?” he had asked. The CM had said that he is deeply saddened that former Kamal Nath was destroying the morale of the country and the state.
