Casual approach
news around midnight, and waited for 10 hours because the official would only look at the application at 10 a.m. the next day. The next day he received a response that his application was rejected.” He added that there were many such instances.
Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami weighed in on the issue on August 6, stating that the e-pass system for inter-district travel was essential because it would curtail unnecessary movement of people. Just a week later, he changed his stand on the issue.
The DMK and the Bharatiya Janata Party demanded that the e-pass system be revoked, but the government refused to accept the demand. However, it eased the process of issuing e-passes in mid-august. Just two days later, 13,853 persons were granted e-passes to travel, according to government data. Some 1.27 lakh people from the districts entered Chennai from August 1 to 18. With more people entering Chennai, the number of cases is expected to rise. The city had already recorded a slight spike in cases since August 14. Since then, the daily number of cases has remained above 1,000. Until August 19, 1.2 lakh people in Chennai had tested positive, while the total for the State was 3.55 lakh.
The Statewide count has also not shown any sign of decreasing. In March there were only 124 cases. This rose to 2,199 in April, 20,010 in May, 67,834 in June, and 1,55,692 in July. In the first 19 days of August, as many as 1,09,590 tested positive.
ON the morning of August 20, Uttar Pradesh became the first State in India to start a session of the Legislative Assembly, nearly six months after the outbreak of COVID-19 was officially acknowledged by the Union and State governments in March. Throughout this six-month period, the pandemic raged on in the country’s most populous State, with cases and casualties increasing by the week. The Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government, meanwhile, made periodic proclamations through the media and other forums lauding its own “contributions in COVID combat”.
The run-up to the three-day Assembly session from