The Supreme Court on Friday said that any decision to impose curfew or lockdown must be announced in advance so that people may make provisions for their livelihood.
The court said this while observing that Covid-19 pandemic has spread like wildfire owing to the lack of implementation of guidelines and SOPs.
“Curfew on weekends/night may be considered by States where it is not in place. However, any decision to impose curfew or lockdown must be announced long in advance so that the people may know and make provisions for the livelihood, like ration,” a Supreme Court bench comprising Justice Ashoke Bhushan, R Subhash Reddy and MR Shah said.
The apex court said strict and stern action should be taken against those who are violating Covid-19 guidelines and SOPs, irrespective of their position.
The bench said there should be more police personnel at food courts, eateries, vegetable markets, sabzi mandis, bus stations, railway stations, etc, as these are the places which are seeing gathering of people.
No permission shall be granted for any celebration as far as possible, the SC noted adding that there should be mechanism in place to check the number of people attending such gathering. The bench also observed that there shall be more and more testing and the focus should be to declare correct facts and figures.
“One must be transparent in number of testing and declaring the facts and figures of the persons who are Corona positive. Otherwise, the people will be misled and they will be under impression that everything is all right and they will become negligent,” the bench noted.
“Another issue is the fatigue of the frontline healthcare officials. They are already exhausted physically and mentally due to tireless work for eight months. Some mechanism may be required to give them intermittent rest,” the apex court said.