Uttar Pradesh: Panchayat elections making smaller districts COVID-19 hotspots

As the state government is grappling to provide beds and medicines for the corona infected people in big cities of Uttar Pradesh, the infection has slowly trickled down to the smaller districts where the health facilities are abysmal as compared to big cities.

The government claims that on April 19, the number of corona infections is 28287 while a week earlier on April 12 it was 13685. A closure scrutiny shows that on April 12, four big cities like Lucknow, Agra, Varanasi, and Prayagraj accounted for 53.3 per cent of the total number but on April 19 these four cities accounted for 40.68 per cent of the total 28,287 cases.

This shows a spike in corona cases in smaller districts too and the number is fast increasing. This increase is uniform across the state – be it eastern UP, western UP or the central UP. In Ghazipur on April 12, the number of cases were 156 and rose to 297 while in Chandauli the number shot up to 362 from 145 in one week. Similarly Ballia recorded 500 cases on April 19 while it was 230 on April 12 and in Gorakhpur the number almost doubled to 810 from 474 in one week.

In Western UP, the number of Covid positive cases in Muzaffarnagar rose from 134 to 566 in one week while Meerut Recorded 336 cases on April 12 and it went up to 911 on April 19.

The rise of cases was extraordinary in Unnao where the number rose from 62 on April 12 to 449 on April 19 while in Sultanpur the number rose to 715 from 108 in just one week.

The reason for this rise is attributed to the influx of migrant workers from bigger cities to their villages in the view of elections. There was always a fear that the corona infection will reach villages if migrant workers come from big cities like Mumbai and Ahmedabad to cast their votes in Panchayat elections.

This fear was also voiced by Allahabad High court in its judgement when it ordered lockdown in five big cities. The court had said: “We must record our displeasure at the way the government and the State Election Commission proceeded to hold elections forcing teachers and other government staff to perform duties exposing themselves to the threat of pandemic that looms large these days. The police was virtually shifted to polling places giving priority to election above public health."

The court further added that the state of Uttar Pradesh where COVID-19 has taken the form of a pandemic, the authorities which were holding the Panchayat elections, were fully in the know of the fact that no activity had to take place where it was not possible to keep people away from each other.

Nevertheless, the Yogi government of Uttar Pradesh has decided to go ahead with the Panchayat election. Criticising the government's casual and half-hearted attitude towards handling the raging pandemic, Congress leader Amarnath Agarwal said, “BJP is more concerned about elections than the lives of people. It (Government) is playing with fire and for this the state will have to pay a price.”