New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: The government on Sunday said that the Tablighi Jamaat, a religious congregation held in Delhi’s Nizamuddin area in March which has now turned into the country’s biggest coronavirus hotspot, has significantly contributed to the doubling of COVID-19 cases in India.
According to the Health Ministry, the rate rate of doubling of COVID-19 cases in India is at present 4.1 days but if the cases linked to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation would not have happened, it would have been 7.4 days.
"If the Tablighi Jamaat incident had not taken place and we compare the rate of doubling - that is in how many days the cases have doubled, we will see that currently it is about 4.1 days (including Jamaat cases) and if the incident had not taken place and additional cases had not come then the doubling rate would have been around 7.4 days," Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal said.
The government said that at least 1,023 confirmed cases of infection have been found to be linked to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in the national capital last month, but massive efforts by various authorities have led to nearly 22,000 people linked to the religious grouping and their primary contacts getting quarantined.
As per the Health Ministry’s website (last updated at 9:00 am on April 6), the death toll in India due to coronavirus is 109 while the number of confirmed cases have reached 4,067.
While 30 per cent of the all coronavirus cases in the country are linked to the religious congregation, in Uttar Pradesh this count goes up to almost 50 per cent.
As per a Times of India report, Tablishi Jamaat chief Maulaana Saad ignored advice from several senior clerics, Muslim intellectuals and even his own aides to cancel the March 2020 Nizamuddin meet in view of the coronavirus outbreak.
The report quoted several community members saying that the stubborn attitude of Saad has not only jeopardised lives of hundreds of his own followers but also tarnished the image of Muslims.