India fights pandemic| PM Narendra Modi's long phone calls with CMs on COVID

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at an event.

These are long, detailed phone calls, sometimes lasting up to half-an-hour or even more. On the line is Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking to a chief minister and the agenda is fighting COVID-19 and asking directly what more the state would need, cutting the bureaucracy in between.

The Prime Minister has called up nearly twenty Chief Ministers in the last 12 days for such one-on-one conversations, in a departure from calling a video-conference meeting with multiple CMs as he last did almost a month ago on April 23 amidst the second wave of Coronavirus hitting the country.

Also Read: Covid-19 preparedness: What our chief ministers want from PM Modi

Since May 6, the PM started calling up CMs individually to discuss strategy against Covid, seek their suggestions and intervene directly to try fulfill the demands most of them had for more oxygen or vaccines, depending on the availability.

The feedback from the CMs is also said to have prompted the PM to ask the Health Ministry to inform states 15 days in advance about the vaccine supplies they should be expecting and coordinate between the vaccine manufacturers and states on the supplies for the 18-44 age group. Modi spoke to CMs of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Jharkhand on May 6, to CMs of Manipur, Tripura and Sikkim on May 7, CMs of Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra on May 8, CMs of Punjab, Karnataka, Bihar and Uttarakhand on May 9, CMs of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Puducherry on May 16 and the Madhya Pradesh CM on May 17 apart from some other CMs of North-Eastern states.

"PM may speak to all Chief Ministers in the country in this manner in the days to come. This is an additional mechanism and a PM's initiative to converse directly with the CMs and take action in real-time," a senior government official explained to News18.

Some of the action has indeed happened quickly once a CM directly raised it with the PM. Like the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin in the phone call with the PM on May 8 asked for the oxygen allocation for his state to be nearly doubled from 220 metric tons (MTs) to 440 MTs, and said he had written a letter to the same effect to the Centre a day earlier.

On the evening of May 8, soon after the PM-CM call, the Centre issued an order increasing the oxygen allocation of Tamil Nadu as desired by the CM.

Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot also raised the demand of increasing the oxygen allocation for his state when the PM called him on May 16. He told the PM that Rajasthan should get oxygen in proportion to its high number of Active cases. Soon after Gehlot got off the call with the PM, Union Minister Piyush Goyal called up Gehlot to discuss the issue.

"We hope the Oxygen allocation of the state will be soon increased. The PM has assured me this will be resolved soon," Gehlot later said in a statement.

Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel after a phone call with PM on May 16 also said the PM had assured he would "sympathetically consider both his demands" of sending more vaccines to the state and allowing diversion of 20% oxygen to small industries.

Modi, in long calls with MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on May 16 and May 9 respectively, assured them of all help from the Centre in the fight against Covid even as he asked them to increase testing as well as vaccination numbers.

Also Read: PM Narendra Modi speaks to chief ministers of four state on COVID-19 situation

Chouhan specifically raised with the PM the issue of the 'Black Fungus' issue emerging during Covid treatment, on which the PM promised expert help, after the CM said his state had made special wards in five hospitals to tackle this new problem. Some demands of CMs have however not been met so far, like Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik asked the PM to exempt the Goods and Service Taxes (GST) on the purchase of Covid-19 vaccine by the States for the 18-44 population.

Punjab CM Captain Amarinder Singh, on May 9, asked the PM to increase the state's Oxygen quota from 227 MT to 300 MT, and ensure urgent supplies of vaccine for the state, towards which the PM assured of all possible help.

The one blip, however, during the new phone call mechanism was when PM called up Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren who later tweeted that the PM "only did his own Mann Ki Baat" during the call.

The PM is still to speak to the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and CMs of states like West Bengal, Haryana, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and others, which he may do in the coming days. Kejriwal had apologized to the PM during a CMs last video-conference with the PM on April 23 after he televised his remarks.

A senior government official meanwhile said that the PM had even intervened earlier to accept genuine suggestions from the Chief Ministers, like when Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on March 17, had urged the Centre to grant permission to State-owned Haffkine Bio-Pharmaceutical Corporation Limited to manufacture COVID-19 vaccine.

"This permission was granted by the Centre on April 16 for this company to manufacture Covaxin. The Maharashtra CM had even thanked the PM for accepting his suggestion," a senior government official said.

The PM held such video-conferences with the CMs on March 17, April 8 and April 23 but the fresh mechanism of one-on-one discussions with the CMs seems to be PMs refined approach.