Upset with the Uttar Pradesh Government’s efforts to curb the spread of corona infection, the Allahabad High Court has directed the administration to impose a one-week lockdown from tonight in five big cities of the state with high caseloads.
The five cities where lockdown would be imposed are: Lucknow, Prayagraj, Varanasi Kanpur and Gorakhpur . The court ordered that the lockdown will commence from Monday night (tonight) and will end on April 27 morning.
A division bench comprising Justice Siddhartha Varma and Ajit Kumar passed the order on a PIL filed by different people and organisations here on Monday.
The bench came down heavily on the UP government as well on the State Election Commission for holding the panchayat polls. "Economy, economy and economy is the only tune that the government is all the time harping upon, but bread and butter if you take to a person who needs oxygen and medication, it will be of no use to him. You may have grocery shops full of eatables and industries which produce bikes and cars but all this won’t be of any use if your medical shops run out of stock of life-saving drugs like Remdesvire in the current surge of the pandemic. It is a shame that while the Government knew of the magnitude of the second wave it never planned things in advance," Judges said in their order.
The bench further said if hospitals are not able to provide beds and oxygen we are sure that cities like Prayagraj, Lucknow, Varanasi Kanpur and Gorakhpur cannot provide medical aid to even 10 percent of the population at any given point of time. If hospitals' staff and medicos go ill for the relentless services to cure people in the pandemic, people would start losing their lives and all pomp and show of development would be of no avail.
The court said in such a situation, the night curfew in the name of Corona Curfew and the weekend Curfew are nothing else but mere eyewash.
“It was probably an effort to show that our last order had been taken care of. We are, however, not satisfied at all. We see people are largely not following our order for putting masks on their faces nor, the police could ensure 100 percent masking to date,” the order said.
"We must record our displeasure at the way the government and the State Election Commission proceeded to hold elections forcing teachers and other government staff to perform duties exposing themselves to the threat of pandemic that looms large these days. The police was virtually shifted to polling places giving priority to election above public health," they said while added the state of Uttar Pradesh where COVID-19 has taken the form of a pandemic the authorities which were holding the Panchayat elections were fully in the know of the fact that no activity had to take place where it was not possible to keep people away from each other.
The court in its order said, "Let a copy of this order be sent to the Chief Secretary, Government of Uttar Pradesh today itself to enforce our above directions forthwith from the night of 19.04.2021 till 26.04.2021 in the cities of Prayagraj, Lucknow, Varanasi, Kanpur Nagar, and Gorakhpur. Copies of this order shall also be placed before the District Magistrates of the concerned districts."
However, the judges said: "Our above directions are nowhere close to a complete lockdown. We are conscious of the fact that before imposing a lockdown the concerned government has to work out various modalities. In this order if we have not imposed a lockdown it does not mean that we do not believe in it. We are still of the view that if we want to break the chain a lockdown for a duration of at least two weeks is a must."