A milestone on the Indian side of Wagah-Attari border shows Pakistani city of Lahore just 22 km away, Image: Satdeep Gill via Wikimedia Commons
Even as more Indians lose lives to COVID-19, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi has refused to develop an oxygen corridor with Pakistan for India’s East Punjab state that has been facing a severe shortage of medical oxygen.
Indian Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and other politicians from the state have asked Modi no fewer than eight times to allow oxygen procurement from Pakistan, whose major city Lahore is just 50km (31 miles) away from Amritsar, Aljazeera TV reported on Thursday.
Indian Punjab’s leaders began demanding oxygen supplies from Pakistan once Prime Minister Imran Khan offered help to India on April 25 as a humanitarian gesture.
Pakistan’s prominent Edhi charity had also volunteered to send medical aid amid rising COVID-19 cases in the country, which has seen around three thousand people die of COVID complications every day since a second deadly wave hit the country hard.
A map of cumulative COVID-19 cases in India by states and UT. Data source: MoHFW. Credit: Shanze1/ Wikimedia
India is the second worst pandemic-hit country after the United States, and each day adds around 400,000 new patients to a large number of infections, worsening oxygen shortages at medical facilities as more and more people seek treatment.
Pakistan’s Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) manufacturing companies have also shown willingness to provide gas to neighboring India.
However, Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government refused to seek any help from what they call an “enemy nation”, amid a deadly second wave of the coronavirus.
But the leaders of Punjab have condemned the callous approach disregarding the urgency to save human lives.
It's been several weeks since emergency oxygen supplies started arriving from abroad, and yet Indians are still dying from a lack of oxygen. More vaccines are of no consolation to all those that can't breathe. What a horrible and heartbreaking crisis. https://t.co/8W9KrbUI5V
— Michael Kugelman (@MichaelKugelman) May 14, 2021
“This denial is proving to be deadly for patients in Punjab who don’t know which breath would be their last breath,” a member of parliament from Amritsar, Gurjit Singh Aujla said, as per media reports.
Aujla was the first to write to Modi on April 26 seeking a special oxygen corridor with Pakistan, and repeated requests on April 27, May 2, and May 5.
In a statement released to the media Amrindar Singh on May 4 publicly confirmed that the centre had rejected his proposal to allow Punjab’s local industry body to import oxygen from Pakistan through the Wagah-Attari border near the capital Amritsar.
Indian civil society and human rights leaders have also taken the Government to task for declining oxygen supplies from Pakistan. The two countries have fought several wars over the disputed Kashmir territory and often jostle for influence in South Asia. In recent years India has emerged as a large world economy but the coronavirus epidemic has exposed shortcomings in its healthcare system. Both countries have shown reluctance in the past to get relief assistance from each other during times of disasters which often strike them together like earthquakes and floods.
Covid Horror! Bodies found floating in Ganga river in Buxar. | @Ankit_Tyagi01#6PMPrime #Covid19 #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/zaQGLfiUAI
— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) May 11, 2021
Meanwhile, the United States and some other countries are helping India deal with the massive health crisis that has already claimed 283,000 Indian lives, and infections have soared to 25.5 million.
The Indian strain has been termed by medical experts as being mor infectious and the World Health Organization has also declared the variant of grave concern.
