Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been chairing series of meetings through video conferences with the people of various channels since the country has been brought under the unprecedented nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the virus in the territory. Earlier, he had convened meetings with the Chief Ministers, Medical teams, and notable sportspersons in the country with the view of expediting the preventive measures and creating awareness on overcoming the threat and ordeal posed by the global pandemic.

In line with that, Modi has chaired the all-party meeting through video-conference on Wednesday to discuss the issues and challenges related to the fight against the COVID-19 in the country with the political parties. The representatives from the national and regional parties that had 5 MPs combined in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha took part at the meeting, which has come at the high time when the nation has been coming through floating anticipations on whether the lockdown would be extended or relaxed. 

India has marked two weeks of the 21-days lockdown period which, as per the notification of the government, would come to an end on April 14th. The conclusion of the complete lockdown must be the timeline for the Central government to take stock of the situation on the virus in the country and it has been highly speculated that the lockdown may be extended as the nation has been reporting surging cases and increase in death toll each day. 

Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, DMK's TR Baalu, Trinamool Congress leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay, Samajwadi Party's Ram Gopal Yadav, BSP leader SC Mishra, Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut, NCP Chief Sharad Pawar, ADMK's Navaneethakrishnan, Lok Janshakti leader Chirag Paswan had taken part in the meet with the Prime Minister during which the leaders discussed the prevailing situations of the lockdown.

According to the reports, many state governments and medical experts have asked the Center to extend the lockdown after April 14th as the nation has been warned that the infection could go high in the coming weeks. Prime Minister Modi said that the current developments must be dealt with by taking hard and difficult decisions and added that the lockdown won't be lifted in one go. The reports have stated that the Central government would be taking the final decision on whether or not to extend the lockdown after Modi's next video-conferencing meet with the Chief Ministers that has been scheduled on Saturday - April 11th, 2020.

The government has been burdened with combating the spread of the virus and fixing the economic corridors that have been hard hit due to the lockdown with the suspensions of the transportation channels and closures of the establishments. The Center may consider the requests to extend the lockdown and at the same time, it will relax some of the restrictions levied on important sectors with the view of focusing on the economy.

According to the official data released by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, India has reported with 5274 positive cases for Coronavirus as of Wednesday noon and the numbers include 411 recoveries and 149 deaths across the country with 35 deaths recorded in the last 24 hours.