A recent poll conducted by the news website The Conversation on social media platform Twitter shows India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi being voted the worst among several world leaders in terms of their countries' response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the poll, PM Modi got 90 percent of the 75,450 votes cast, far ahead of former US President Donald Trump with 4.9 percent, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro with 3.6 percent and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador with 1.3 percent.
‘World’s Worst Pandemic Leaders’: PM Modi Finds Mention
The Conversation also carried a piece, dated 18 May, titled 'World's worst pandemic leaders: 5 presidents and prime ministers who badly mishandled COVID-19', in which Modi found the first mention.
Writing on India’s COVID-19 response, Sumit Ganguly, professor at Indiana University, referenced the PM’s campaign rallies ahead of state Assembly elections in April, as well as the Kumbh Mela, along with slow pace of vaccination in the country.
"India is the new epicenter of the global pandemic, recording some 400,000 new cases per day by May 2021. However grim, this statistic fails to capture the sheer horror unfolding there. COVID-19 patients are dying in hospitals because doctors have no oxygen to give and no lifesaving drugs like remdesivir. The sick are turned away from clinics that have no free beds," he wrote in the piece.
The other leaders who found mention in the story were Brazil's Bolsonaro, Belarus' Alexander Lukashenko, Donald Trump and Mexico's López Obrador.
The country's devastating second wave of COVID-19 has led many to criticise the PM Modi-led Central government. The second surge has been marked by dire shortages of hospital beds, medical oxygen and medicines being reported from across the country.
On Wednesday, the country reported 2,67,334 new coronavirus cases and 4,529 deaths.
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