Hyderabad: Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) will hold a cabinet meet today at 2 p.m. to discuss the extension of the lockdown and several other issues. The government is exploring different options on the lockdown issue. Moreover, Hyderabad Lok Sabha MP and AIMIM head Asaduddin Owaisi also staunchly opposed its extension.
The state Public Health and Family Welfare department has also submitted its report to the government, based on which a decision will be take by KCR. On the directions of the High Court, the Telangana government, in order to curb the spread COVID-19’s second wave, had imposed a lockdown for ten days starting from May 12.
However, in a series of tweets, Asaduddin Owaisi on Sunday said that the lockdown is something that doesn’t help, and instead strategy destroys the “lives of poor” people. “As data shows, COVID cases were already reducing much much before lockdown was imposed on 12th May. It’s quite clear that it’s not lockdown that helped. It’s also clear that COVID can be combatted without lockdown 2/5”, said one of his tweets.
Owaisi, in his conclusion, urged chief minister KCR to instead impose restrictions from 6 p.m. onwards. “Strongly urge @TelanganaCMO to not extend lockdown. If goal is to reduce crowding, then we may consider evening curfews (6 PM onwards) or mini-lockdowns for COVID clusters. But expecting ~3.5cr people to live for weeks with just a 4 hour lockdown relaxation is not fair at all 4/5,” he added.
During the lockdown period, the Telangana government has allowed the public four hours as relaxation, from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. to buy essential commodities. On May 18 the government took another major decision to extend the lockdown till May 30.
It has to be noted that KCR was against the idea of a night curfew or lockdown to be imposed in the state. But in view of the rising number of COVID-19 cases, state chief secretary Somesh Kumar held discussions with KCR KCR and imposed the night curfew.
During this time KCR himself was infected with COVID-19. Later after recovering from the disease, the chief minister imposed the lockdown. After what the state government says has been a successful implementation of the lockdown, the covid-19 cases are on the decline in the state.On Saturday 2982 coronavirus cases were recorded with 21 deaths.
Due to the lockdown the state finances has also been badly hit and the government is keen to revive the economy also. Meanwhile the state government is exploring different options on the lockdown issue. It has been learnt that the government is thinking of extending the lockdown by one more week.
Secondly, it is also considering to increase the relaxation hours or imposing the night curfew. Sources said that the government does not want to remove the lockdown at once, but wants to lift the restrictions one-by-one at a time.