To curb Covid surge in dist: Panel of IAS officers formed to act as ‘Nodal officers’

KOLKATA: The state government set up a panel comprising 22 senior IAS officers to act as nodal officers for respective districts to combat the surge in Covid cases besides issuing a fresh advisory for effective enforcement of wearing masks, social distancing and maintenance of Covid norms in all public places.

The advisory also contains a set of guidelines for establishments starting from offices, market places, shopping malls to stadia and swimming pools. Private offices are advised to reintroduce work from home or rotational shifts.

The state Home Secretary HK Dwivedi is the nodal officer for Kolkata and Howrah while the state Finance secretary Manoj Pant will be supervising the work in North 24-Parganas. Senior IAS officers MV Rao, Barun Ray, A Subbiah, Roshni Sen, Prabhat Mishra, Pritha Sarkar, Subrata Gupta, Kaushik Bhattacharya, Surendra Gupta, Hirdyesh Mohan, Manoj Agarwal, Ajit Bardhan, Manish Jain and Vijay Bharti are nodal officers for West Midnapore, East Midnapore, Purulia, Jhargram, Bankura, South 24-Parganas, Jalpaiguri, North Dinajpur, Darjeeling and Kalimpong, Hooghly, East Burdwan, Cooch Behar, West Burdwan and Birbhum respectively.

An order issued by the state Home and Hill Affairs department on Saturday states that the nodal officers would also share regular reports and information with the task force at the state level with Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay as its chairperson.

In the fresh guideline, issued by the state Home and Hill Affairs department on Saturday, all concerned authorities have been directed for effective enforcement of Covid norms in public places.