Lucknow: Once again, pan-India lockdown and social distancing norms were breached in UP as people in many districts were in a scramble to buy essentials, following a statement of the chief secretary to a leading Hindi news channel that several hotspots had been identified in 15 districts with higher number of corona cases.
“No one will be allowed to move out and all essential services will be home delivered. Curfew passes will also be reviewed,” chief secretary of the State RK Tiwari allegedly told the channel. This important announcement was later picked up by many media houses. From Noida to Bareilly to Lucknow, markets were thronging with panic buyers who wanted to buy each and everything in huge quantity. “
Many shopkeepers exploited the mass hysteria and hiked the prices,” people in Lucknow complained. To add to the confusion, Home and Information secretary Awanish Awasthi, who is part of Yogi’s “Team 11” which is managing the lockdown, said in his regular presser, “All the hotspots in 15 districts, which have reported six or more covid19 cases, will be sealed.
No one will be allowed to come out of the house and or enter. Medicines, rations and other needs of the residents living in the hotspot will be taken care of by the administration and the police.” As the official list of all 15 districts was not available till late night, confusion and anxiety reigned.
The blacklisted districts are Noida, Ghaziabad, Agra, Meerut, Bulandshahr, Saharanpur, Shamli, Firozabad, Bareilly, Lucknow, Kanpur, Sitapur, Varanasi, Maharajganj and Basti, many of which have huge population.
A University professor said, “If the government was going to seal hotspots, it should have done it with proper planning and clear directions, not with such confusion at the top. The officials have created pandemonium on the streets. The weeks of social distancing have gone down the drain.” Hemant Tiwari, a political analyst, said, “Whatever happened was a blunder and it has exposed the one- up Manship among the babus to score brownie points.
Since, Yogi’s 55 ministers have been grounded for reasons best known to him, the blame rests at his doorstep and his 11-member squad.’’ Before giving contradictory statements to the TV channels, they should have prepared the list of hotspots and imposed section 144 in those districts, he added.
