Ujjain: District Crisis (Disaster) Management Committee (DCMC) in Ujjain is in the center of yet another controversy.
Critics have denounced the autocratic, hasty, impractical and opaque decision making and monopolistic way of functioning of the body amid lockdown due to Covid-19 outbreak, in Ujjain. First up critics accused that DCMC is not inclusive in that only few persons (read those who represent BJP) are included as its non-official members.
Issues pertaining to conflicts of interest which occurred between the Member of Parliament and MLAs over favouring certain hospitals and traders during two meetings of the DCMC have already been reported by the Free Press. Now, the latest input is that all these members (peoples’ representatives) are now indulging in the credit game. This fact came to fore on Friday night after the DCMC meeting where most of the members (those belonging to BJP) tried to earn brownie points at the cost of other in the name of advocating more and more relaxations for the people during lockdown-4.0.
Although, lockdown 4.0 is slated to end on May 31 (Sunday), but these publicity-hungry politicians, through various media outlets, tried to propagate that the entire markets in Ujjain will be allowed to open for two days on experimental basis with effect from May 30 (Saturday).
However, district administration did not issue requisite order in this regard. It led to a lot of chaos among the shoppers and businessmen. People thronged roads and reached different markets for purchasing. However, before they could take anything away police entered in the picture and used force and abusive language to disperse them.
In a face-saving exercise the administration then issued an order in the afternoon, which did not mentioned any of the lucrative relaxations which were propagated by the politicians. Amid confusion and chaos, a cavalcade of senior officials reached the markets for the inspection and to assess the extent of damage in the form of violation of lockdown norms that such selfishness on the part of politicians have ushered.
Besides some key government officials, those who took part in Friday’s DCMC meeting include MP Anil Firojia, MLAs Paras Jain and Mohan Yadav, mayor Meena Jonwal, Ujjain Municipal Corporation president Sonu Gehlot, BJP city president Vivek Joshi and general secretary Suresh Giri. BJP has one more MLA in the district Bahadur Singh Chauhan, but he was not invited for the meeting, as according to the sources the city leaders did not want to give him weightage.
Chauhan’s constituency- Mahidpur is also under the grip of coronavirus, but efforts were made to reduce DCMC to merely a city panel. Moreover, none of the four MLAs of the Congress from the district were invited for the meeting. Opposition Congress party functionaries were also sidelined.
Not only this, none of the expert from any sector, social worker, spiritual leader, prominent, media person or an NGO has been made a member of DCMC. It is mandatory to include all of them in the DCMC.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already directed that all such persons should be taken into confidence as a pandemic cannot be tackled by government and administration (read PM, CM and DM) only.
Throughout Saturday, a number of prominent figures of the district approached Free Press to share their woes that despite Ujjain district falling under ‘Red Zone’ category and continuous increase in number of positive patients and deaths, none of the responsible authorities seem to be serious about the welfare of the locals.
None of district authorities were ready to come on record to clarify their stand on this mess which led to chaos and confusion the city. A senior divisional officer, however, attempted to defend the district authorities by saying that such issues surface at the time of crisis. Meanwhile, MP Firojia advocated DCMC be made more inclusive, adding that it would ease the way to combat the dreaded virus.
