‘Pandemic is not a political battlefield’

Dinesh Singh Babbu, Sujanpur

Unity faith and sacrifice are required to tackle the pandemic. We must stay united as humans and must have faith in ourselves and sacrifice our self-obsession.

But the problem is some local satraps are treating the pandemic as a political battlefield. And this is the last thing we want as we are in the midst of fighting one of the greatest crisis humans have ever seen.

During lockdown-1 when relief material bags, surprisingly carrying CM Amarinder Singh’s photo, arrived, his sycophants thought the time was ripe to indulge in cheap vote bank politics.

They started distributing ration on the basis of political affiliations. Needless to say, the lion’s share was grabbed by Congress loyalists. I say such people are ‘Covidiots’. An official clandestinely told me what was happening.

The next thing I did was to call a meeting of presidents of all three BJP mandals. A conscious decision was taken to donate liberally to ensure the poor got their due and not just Congress workers. I dug deep into my pockets and donated Rs 25 lakh. Likewise, more donations started flowing in.

As a representative of people, if I cannot lend a helping hand now, then why I am here in the first place? Remember we are not fighting each other but we are fighting the virus. We are not enemies, the virus is.

(AS TOLD TO Ravi Dhaliwal)