Lockdown: KCR Wants Authority To States

It appears Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is still not happy with the way the Narendra Modi government at the Centre dictating to the states on imposition of lockdown and relaxation of norms from April 20.

For the second consecutive day, KCR’s mouth piece newspapers  – Namasthe Telangana Telugu daily and Telangana Today English daily – have been writing banner stories against the Centre’s decision to allow significant exemptions in the lockdown after April 20.

The dailies conducted public opinion surveys on the lockdown relaxations and as expected majority of their readers online and offline have opposed any kind of relaxations in the lockdown and felt that the stringent measures being implemented in the state should continue.

At the same time, they also carried the opinions of various experts including epidemiologists and public health specialists who argued that India has not yet seen the peak of the coronavirus epidemic curve and any relaxation at this stage would bring the situation back to square one.

They said the ongoing lockdown strategies are credited for breaking transmission chains, a reason why almost a third of the global population is under lockdown. Major economic powers like Italy, France and the United Kingdom have already announced lockdowns till May, while almost all countries in Europe and Asia are in a lockdown till this month-end.

They asserted that the decision to implement or remove exemptions and lockdowns should be left to the discretion of the State governments.

“The Union Health Ministry is in no position to accurately know the ground realities and the local State governments should be left to take their own decisions,” they said. 

There is also a fear that even a limited release or exemption in the lockdown in hotspots from April 20 could potentially trigger clusters or perhaps even sow seeds for a wider outbreak.