165 Indian journalists lost their lives to COVID so far: Rahul Gandhi highlights plight of journalists

New Delhi: Amid rising COVID-19 cases and deaths across the country, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday shared a report highlighting the deaths of journalists in India due to the disease.

Tweeting a picture of the statistics of the deaths of journalists, the Congress leader said, “Look at the condition of those who show you 24 hours, once!” (roughly translated from Hindi).

जो 24 घंटे तुम्हें दिखाते हैं, उनकी हालत एक बार तो देखो! pic.twitter.com/EkJfCHPgra

— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) May 2, 2021

The picture tweeted by the Congress MP from a report dated May 1, stated, “165 Indian journalists lost their lives to COVID so far. On an average two journalists succumbed to the virus every day in April.”

This comes amid widespread demand to treat journalists as frontline workers and give them preference in vaccination.

Last month, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat had ordered the vaccination of all journalists and representatives of media organisations in the state calling them “frontline workers.”

On April 14, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had urged the Central government to treat journalists as frontline workers and vaccinate them against COVID-19. He had said the Delhi government will write to Centre on the issue.

Yesterday, the Editors Guild of India (EGI) had condoled the death of journalists due to COVID-19 in the past year and again called on the government to give them priority in vaccination along with frontline workers.

Meanwhile, India reported 3,92,488 new COVID-19 cases, 3,689 deaths and 3,07,865 discharges in the last 24 hours, as per Union Health Ministry.