While hearing a petition, the Allahabad High Court has urged the Election Commission to delay Uttar Pradesh assembly elections by a month or two amid the omicron fears. The court has even asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prohibit all the gathering in connection the upcoming elections.
“If rallies are not stopped, results will be worse than the second wave,” said Justice Shekhar Yadav saying, “Jaan hai toh Jahaan hai (if there is life, we have the world).”
The court made these observations after court was being regularly crowded with hundreds of cases filed daily and no covid appropriate behaviour was followed. Citing reports over the rising omicron cases and several countries imposing curbs, the court said, “There’s a possibility of the third wave of Covid as the cases of the new variant Omicron are rising”.
“Gram Panchayat elections and the Bengal assembly elections infected a lot of people, which caused many deaths as well,” said the Justice. He said the political parties are regularly conducting rallies for the upcoming elections and following covid guidelines is not possible in these gatherings.
He requested the Election Commission to ban all the rallies and gatherings in connection with the elections and advised to ask parties to conduct their campaigns either in newspapers or Doordarshan but nit physical events.later
Ignoring covid appropriate behaviour amid the elections have been heavily criticized. As the new omicron is highly transmissible, their are worries that if these political events goes on like this then these may turn out to be the biggest superspreader events that the health infrastructure may fail to deal with later.
