Karnataka on Thursday slammed its doors on people wanting to return to the state by imposing a ban on trains, road travel and flights from Maharashtra and four other states. The ban comes in order to contain the rapid spike in COVID-19 cases, leaving stranded migrant workers from the state to fend for themselves.
While air traffic has been restricted from five states — Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan — entry through rail and road routes have been banned from three states -- Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Gujarat.
But after announcing the ban, the state did a U-turn with regard to flights.
A couple of hours after his media briefing post the Cabinet meeting, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister J C Madhuswamy said the Karnataka government “had not announced a complete ban” on flights from five states and instead decided to “lessen air traffic” to the State.
“The State Government has requested the Civil Aviation Ministry to reduce the number of flights, emanating from Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan to Karnataka, in view of the high number of Covid-19 Cases prevalent there,” Madhuswamy clarified.
The minister said that the decision to put a ban on air and rail traffic was taken “in view of several passengers from these states testing positive for Covid-19 in Karnataka leading to a rise in fresh cases in the state since the last few days.”
“We have written to the Centre requesting to take steps to lessen (incoming) air traffic to the State, with the sacred intention that there may not be adequate quarantine facilities if there is huge turnout at a short span of time,” he added.
Asymptomatic cases from these states have burdened the quarantine facilities in the state.
“The sudden hike in numbers has also resulted in tests taking more time to be completed. These restrictions will be in place for the next few days,” Madhuswamy said.
The decision on restricting air traffic and banning rail and road entries was taken after a cabinet meeting. The state is fighting a grim battle of providing hospital facilities for COVID-19 patients in places like Mandya, Hassan, Chitradurga and Kolar, and the ban may help it to build more infrastructure.
Karnataka is particularly worried of people coming from Mumbai as over 80 percent of the new case load witnessed in the state in the last one week was due to returnees from Maharashtra – mostly migrant labourers.
Even on Thursday, 95 out of the 115 fresh cases were from inter-state passengers alone, the most continuing to be from Maharashtra.
However, those seeking to travel to these states from Karnataka will be allowed to do so, officials clarified.
“It will take at least eight to 10 days for all the people in quarantine to be relieved. Let these people finish their quarantine period and then we will see about relaxing the travel restrictions,” Madhuswamy added.
Karnataka has been witnessing a trend of inter-state passengers returning to the state contributing to the heavy case load for the last few days.
While the total crossed the 1000-mark only on May 15, over two months since the first case was confirmed in Bengaluru on March 9, the number rose to 2533 as on Thursday.
