As India battles the COVID-19 crisis, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday held a video conference with chief ministers primarily to take their feedback on whether the 21-day nationwide lockdown be extended beyond April 14 to stem the tide of the infections. During the meeting PM Modi was seen wearing a home-made cloth face mask.
After the photos of PM Modi wearing home-made cloth face mask started doing rounds on social media, netizens took to Twitter and they have been expressing their views in the way they know best: by posting about it on social media. Since then #Gamcha has been trending on Twitter. The tweets that have been doing the rounds are hilarious.
The Central government is understood to have also obtained views on the issue from all the relevant agencies and stakeholders involved in the efforts to contain the spread of the pandemic.
The video conference, which began at 11am, comes amidst indications that the central government may extend the nationwide lockdown with some possible relaxations even as Punjab and Odisha have already announced extending the lockdown beyond April 14 when the current spell of 21-day shutdown across the country ends on Tuesday.
The Union Home Ministry has sought views of state governments on various aspects, including whether more categories of people and services need to be exempted. In the current lockdown only essential services are exempted.