NEW DELHI: Throwing cold water on demands to lift travel restrictions between Delhi and neighbouring Noida and Ghaziabad, the Uttar Pradesh government told the Supreme Court on Friday that it will continue to put curbs as 40 per cent of the COVID-19 cases in the two NCR cities were tracked to the national capital.
The UP government said only essential services would be free of any restrictions. “Considering the extreme health parameters, we have restricted the movement. As of now we have allowed movement of paramedical and medical, traffic of goods, advocates and the media. We are giving out emergency e-passes,” the UP government’s counsel said.
UP pointed out that while Delhi has a population of 2 crore, Noida and Ghaziabad together are only 50 lakh. It also referred to COVID data, saying that while Delhi has over 33,000 cases and over 1,000 deaths, Noida and Ghaziabad together have only 1,000 cases and 40 deaths.
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The counsel informed that while Delhi allowed home quarantine to curb the COVID spread, the Noida and Ghaziabad administrations had made institutional quarantining mandatory.
But the court took strong exception to the Noida DM’s order making institutional quarantine for all COVID-19 cases, including asymptomatic people, compulsory.
“If you do institutional quarantine for asymptomatic persons in Noida/Ghaziabad and others are not doing it, then it may lead to chaos 15 days down the line. There cannot be guidelines contrary to the national guidelines,” the bench said.
The court was hearing a plea filed by a Gurugram resident demanding the Delhi-NCR be considered a single region. The matter will next be heard on June 17.
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