'Insanity, same thing over and over': Rahul Gandhi slams Centre's lockdown policy, says India winning 'wrong race'

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday attacked the Centre over the surge in the cases of novel coronavirus cases in the country.

On Twitter, Gandhi, referring to the country having the highest number of COVID-19 cases after the US, Brazil, and Russia, stated, "India is firmly on it`s way to winning the wrong race. A horrific tragedy, resulting from a lethal blend of arrogance and incompetence."

At present, India has been placed in the fourth position among all countries in terms of the number of coronavirus cases.

The Congress leader's remarks came on a day when for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak, India recorded over 10,000 new cases in 24 hours taking the tally to more than 3 lakh. He also assumedly hinted at the central government's nationwide lockdown policy as being futile and with a sharp critical note, said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

He accompanied this tweet with graphs comparing the spike in COVID-19 cases in the country during the various lockdown phases.

The coronavirus cases in India has crossed the three lakh-mark as it recorded as many as 11,458 in 24 hours.

The virus has spread rapidly and the country has marked significant and consecutive highest jumps in the COVID-19 tally over a major part of the past two weeks.

India's COVID-19 count has hit a new high, crossing the 3.09 lakh-mark, while the death toll is nearing the 9,000-mark as well.

Maharashtra continues to be the epicenter of the coronavirus spread where the number of cases has witnessed an even large spike recently. According to the Health Ministry, Maharashtra has the highest number of cases with more than one lakh positive cases of infection and over 3,700 deaths. As many as 3,493 new COVID-19 cases were reported from the state in the past 24 hours.

Shopping malls, religious places, hotels, and restaurants have now been reopened in most states from earlier this week after more than two months of sustained lockdown. The current phase of re-opening, called 'Unlock 1', takes an economic focus. The government intends on being smart about implementing the lockdown in select places so that the economic activity of the country, as a whole, does not take any more hits.

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had also released the standard operating procedure (SOPs) for malls, restaurants, and hotels as they opened these establishments under relaxed guidelines. But a lot of details were also left to the discretion of the states to finetune.