Lockdown 4.0 was recently announced by the Central government, as the country attempts to fight off the novel coronavirus outbreak. This phase of the lockdown brought with it a relaxation of many of the restrictions in all areas except the containment zones.
In the fourth phase of lockdown, states have been given greater autonomy. They can now delineate the red, green and orange zones, as well as impose additional restrictions.
On Tuesday the Government of Maharashtra issued a circular explaining how the state lockdown would be going forward. Under this, similar to the central guidelines, e-commerce activities can resume in all the zones of Maharashtra, except the containment areas.
This applies to both essential as well as non-essential e-commerce activities.
These revised guidelines will go into effect from May 22, that is Friday.
It must be mentioned that a containment zone is different from a red zone. While Mumbai for example falls into the latter category, there are many containment zones within the city. These are areas where cases have been detected, and here, even under the revised guidelines, only essential activities are permitted here.
In the case of Mumbai the BMC recently said that an entire building or residential complex does not need to be sealed if a case is detected. In such a case, the BMC suggested sealing only the affected floor if it was a high-rise building.
