PM cancels campaign visit to Bengal tomorrow; to chair high-level meetings on COVID-19

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today cancelled his visit to Bengal on Friday to campaign for the ongoing state election citing urgent meetings to review the Covid situation in the country. Home Minister Amit Shah also cut short his campaign, cancelling two of his three Bengal meetings to return to Delhi for a meeting on Covid. According to the BJP, all its top leaders have called off the rest of their campaign in Bengal.

"Tomorrow, will be chairing high-level meetings to review the prevailing COVID-19 situation. Due to that, I would not be going to West Bengal," PM Modi tweeted, effectively ending his campaign in Bengal, which will vote in three more rounds before the election results on May 2.

The Bengal BJP soon announced that on its request, the Prime Minister had agreed to address voters virtually at 5 pm tomorrow. PM Modi was scheduled to address four election meetings.

Rallies by the PM, other BJP leaders and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee have been drawing huge, frightening crowds in Bengal in the time of Covid. The optics have looked particularly bad for the ruling party when Covid cases have been rocketing. This morning, India reported a global high of 3.14 lakh cases in a day and over 2,000 deaths.

On Saturday, the Prime Minister seemed to praise the large crowd at a rally in Bengal on a day India reported 2.34 lakh Covid cases in a day.

Even today, top BJP leaders held public meetings and roadshows in Bengal. So did Mamata Banerjee, who reduced the duration of her speeches but did not stop campaigning as she fights for a third straight term against a strong challenge from the BJP.

Criticised for keeping up its outsized rallies despite the raging infections, the BJP said it would limit the number of people to 500 and the PM's meetings for Saturday were clubbed with his Friday campaign.

PM Modi has held a series of meetings this week as spiraling Covid cases in the country threaten to overwhelm health care facilities in several states. He has met with state health officials, vaccine manufacturers and pharma companies. Today, he chaired a meeting on the snowballing oxygen crisis that has seen states bickering with states and states sparring with the Centre over supplies.