The Allahabad High Court on Thursday directed the Meerut administration to apprise it of the prevailing COVID-19 status in the district after a petition alleged that the situation there was “critical, grievous and sensitive.”
A Division Bench of Justices Ramesh Sinha and Siddhartha Varma directed the State counsel to seek necessary instructions from the District Magistrate, Meerut and brief the court of the “alarming situation” in Meerut.
The petitioners had “brought to our notice that the adequate measures with regard to restraining the spread of COVID-19 are not being taken,” the court observed. The matter would be heard on June 9.
In their petition filed on May 22, lawyers Namman Rajvanshi and Siddharth Jain cited newspaper reports to note that Meerut had the highest death rate compared to other cities in the “Red Zone” in Uttar Pradesh such as Agra, Kanpur Nagar, Lucknow and Gautam Budh Nagar.
The petition cited the State government data of May 16 to say that the recovery rate of Meerut district was only 29.5% as compared to 57.15% of Uttar Pradesh, while the morality rate in Meerut was 5.59 %, higher than the State rate of 2.43% and also above the national rate of 3.13%.
The statistics show that the city of Meerut and its administration “failed in combating and taking appropriate measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, which makes it necessary that a special mechanism has to be formulated under the direct monitoring and supervision of the judiciary,” the petition said.
