SC REFUSES TO STAY COUNTING OF VOTES FOR UP PANCHAYAT POLLS

The counting of votes for the panchayat polls in Uttar Pradesh will be held on Sunday with the Supreme Court on Saturday refusing to stay the process but asking the state government to notify officers who will be held responsible for any lapse regarding the compliance of Covid-19 guidelines and assurances. The results may start trickling in from Sunday night, hours after the manual counting of votes starts simultaneously throughout the state at 8am. The court turned down a bunch of pleas against the counting of votes after the UP government and the state election commission gave undertakings to comply with all safety guidelines.

LUCKNOW: The husbands of two women teachers who were assigned poll duty have alleged that their spouses were not exempted despite being pregnant, with the result that they contracted Covid-19 while at work and succumbed.

However, minister of state (independent charge) for basic education, Satish Chandra Dwivedi said it was wrong to say that the teachers on poll duty died of Covid.

“There’s no specific audit done by the basic education department about the number of teachers’ death…How do we know that teachers were not infected when they came for election duty? And how do we know that teachers did not get infected after returning from election duty?” he said.

Kalyani Agrahari, 27, a teacher of Composite Vidyalaya, Oina in Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, who was eight months pregnant, had submitted an application to the state election commission to relieve her from poll duty due to ‘critical pregnancy’, said her husband Deepak Chand.

Kalyani had to go for training on April 9, did election duty on April 15 (for which she had to travel 30 km where she probably contracted infection) and succumbed to Covid -19 on April 24, alleged Deepak.

Likewise, Sangeeta Singh, 33, assistant teacher in a composite school in Dikra village at Shravasti district, was four months pregnant. She was carrying twins, according to ultrasound report. Yet she was not exempted from election duty, alleged her husband Shashank Singh. He said he lost his wife before their first wedding anniversary on June 14.

Singh said he and his wife went to the CDO office in Shravasti on April 10 on their two-wheeler for training and later his wife showed symptoms of corona. In the RTPCR report dated April 15, she was tested positive. He brought her to Lucknow after a four-hour journey by road and got her admitted to a private hospital in Chinhat. He took her to another private hospital at Safedabad (Barabanki) on April 16. He had a last video call with her on April 17 at 7.43 pm. At midnight she succumbed, her husband said.

Kalyani was one of the 69,000 assistant teachers appointed recently. She got her appointment letter on December 5 and had not not received her first salary yet, her husband said.

Deepak Chand said Kalyani did not want to do the panchayat election duty on April 15 as she was eight months pregnant and it was difficult for her to sit on a chair for long. He said on April 9, he took her to the office of the chief development officer, Jaunpur with an application requesting exemption.

She gave the application in Hindi that read: “I have been assigned duty in the panchyat polls and my code number is 24146. Due to my critical pregnancy, I will not be able to come on duty. Therefore, it is my humble request to the district election officer to relieve me from my duty.”

She was asked to check the final list of those who would be deployed on election duty or be exempted. But Kalyani did not get an exemption, her husband said. She was told by a staff that those who did not turn up for duty would face FIR and lose salary.

She did election duty on April 15 and died on April 24 without getting proper treatment. All the hospitals refused to admit her. Kalyani’s death certificate said she died due to cardiopulmonary arrest. She was pregnant and Covid-positive too.

Both Deepak Chand and Shashank Singh blamed the ‘system’ that led to the death of Kalyani and Sangeeta who were expectant mothers. They said the state election commission and state government should not close their eyes to genuine request of women teachers.

However, minister Satish Chandra Dwivedi said, “Government teachers alone were not doing election duty. There were people from other departments too. We don’t have any data of how teachers got infected and I don’t know how teachers’ association leader has prepared a list of 700 teachers and staff who succumbed to Covid.”