No Cabinet in place, MP's BJP govt forms task force to tackle Covid-19

Chouhan stumped

With no Cabinet in place and pressure mounting on Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to appoint ministerial colleagues, the Madhya Pradesh unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party has stepped in to appoint a task force to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The first meeting of the task force was convened via a video conference. During the discussion, Kailash Vijayavargiya, BJP National General Secretary and a member of the task force, posed a few tricky questions to Chouhan: “What is the role of the task force?” and “Can members directly ask officers to follow our orders?” The otherwise loquacious chief minister was at a loss for words. The move to form the task force came late on Monday after the opposition slammed the ruling party in the state for being slow in taking the coronavirus challenge head on.

Adityanath's plan

The Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh is said to be working on a plan to attract investors who are considering moving out of China in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The state government is even ready to tweak some of its policies to woo the investors to relocate to UP. The idea to attract investors pulling out of China was mooted by the chief minister during a high-level meeting held in the presence of MSME Minister Sidharth Nath Singh and Industrial Development Minister Satish Mahana on Wednesday. The state was already working on strategies to attract investments to the state with an investors’ summit held in 2018 and a defence expo held in Lucknow earlier this year. It is particularly keen on attracting global players in the food processing industry, among the biggest in the Wuhan province of China before the coronavirus outbreak.

Misunderstood ‘helicopter’

Globally policymakers have announced packages worth trillions of dollars to revive their economies. Part of those is “helicopter money”, a term used for putting money in the hands of people to spur spending. Similar demands are being made in India. One regional channel ran a ticker, stating that the government might opt for helicopter money. Lost in translation, PIB Fact Check, a verified Twitter handle aimed at “countering misinformation on government schemes”, refuted the claim stating “the government is not going to drop money from helicopters”.