Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla on Wednesday wrote another letter to the States cautioning that “some States are allowing exceptions beyond what has been allowed under lockdown measures by the MHA [Ministry of Home Affairs].”
Mr. Bhalla said the exceptions amounts to violation of the lockdown measures under the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and might defeat the overall objective of containing the spread of COVID-19.
On March 24, when the 21-day lockdown was announced, the Ministry issued a slew of guidelines to be followed by the States for “containment of COVID-19 epidemic”, and asked all “enforcing authorities to note that these strict restrictions fundamentally relate to movement of people, but not to that of essential goods.”
Minister of State for Home G. Kishan Reddy contributed a month’s salary to the Prime Minister-CARE fund that has been set up to collect money to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mr. Reddy also allocated ₹1 crore from his MPLAD fund to the PM-CARE account.
Portal to verify facts
Mr. Bhalla wrote another letter to States based on observations made by the Supreme Court while hearing a petition on relief measures for migrants who were seen walking to their home States from place of their work in different parts of the country amidst the ongoing lockdown. He said the Centre is creating a web portal where “people can verify facts and unverified news promptly”. He asked the States/UTs to create similar mechanism and send action taken report to MHA as next date of hearing in Supreme Courtis April 7. The web portal comes in the wake of a Supreme Court directive on March 31 that migration of labourers was triggered by panic created by fake news that lockdown will continue for more than three months. The Supreme Court had asked the government to develop a system to share credible information with people.
