Indian Punjab gasps as Modi refuses to seek oxygen from Pakistan

AMRITSAR: Amid an alarming shortage of medical oxygen, the Punjab government approached Prime Minister Narendra Modi to facilitate an “oxygen corridor” with Pakistan which shares a 550km-long border with the northwestern state.

There have been at least eight instances of requests made by Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and other politicians from the state, asking Modi to procure oxygen from Pakistan, whose city of Lahore is barely 50km away from Amritsar, reported foreign media on Thursday. The demand to procure oxygen from Pakistan came after the country’s Prime Minister Imran Khan offered help to India on April 25. Pakistan’s prominent Edhi charity also volunteered to send medical aid amid rising COVID-19 cases in the country.

However, Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government refused to seek any help from its “enemy nation”, amid a lethal second wave of the coronavirus killing thousands of people daily. “This denial is proving to be deadly for patients in Punjab who don’t know which breath would be their last breath,” member of parliament from Amritsar, Gurjit Singh Aujla, told Al Jazeera. Aujla was the first to write to Modi on April 26, seeking a special oxygen corridor with Pakistan as it was geographically proximate. When he did not hear back from the prime minister, he wrote again on April 27, followed by more letters on May 2 and May 5.

Meanwhile, Singh also released a statement on May 4, stating 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 Amritsar. While more than 10 days have passed since the centre’s refusal, the disrupted oxygen supply chain in Punjab is yet to be restored.