Onus on EC to impose Covid discipline at poll rallies
After the successful completion of the three-phase Bihar Assembly polls in October-November last year amid the pandemic, Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora patted himself on the back for taking that leap of faith despite naysayers warning it was foolhardy. But the EC did next to nothing to enforce pandemic-appropriate behaviour like personal distancing and masking up during the Bihar campaign trail, which led to fears that the state could become a Covid hotspot after the poll dust settled.
The apprehension was because of the widely anticipated second Covid wave during winter, which begins in November. But as luck would have it, the first wave started flattening and there was no winter surge, giving Arora a place in the sun. Netas, too, perhaps assumed they had beaten the bug for good. The only enforcement the poll panel did was at the polling booths in Bihar, where it provided sanitisers, masks and gloves to keep the EVMs safe, a template Arora replicated in the current elections to four states and a Union Territory.But the virus was devious.
It started unspooling when the weather began to change in March, which was when the poll schedule, too, was out. Now, midway into the eight-phase Bengal polls, the state has close to 5,000 fresh Covid cases a day. There are calls already to suspend the rest of the Bengal polls till the situation stabilises. For, large crowds at political rallies each day with just a small percentage of them wearing masks shows the message hasn’t sunk in. The least the EC could do is to rigorously enforce Covid protocols through multiple means, including barring or restricting entry at rallies to keep electioneering safe. Arora has just retired and apparently under the new CEC Sushil Chandra’s directions, the state poll panel has done the right thing by calling an all-party meeting to evolve a consensus on modifying campaigning during the pandemic.
Equally worrisome is the carelessness of the lakhs of people participating in the month-long Kumbh Mela in Haridwar. The Uttarakhand government ought to find ways to restrict entry if not call off the mela entirely so that pilgrims don’t end up becoming superspreaders of Covid on their return home.