Weekend curfew in UP after SC stays HC lockdown order

Night curfew in areas with 500+ cases

The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the Allahabad high court’s order directing a lockdown in five Uttar Pradesh cities — Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi and Gorakhpur.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Sharad A. Bobde and comprising Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian passe d the stay order on a plea by the UP government against Monday’s high court order.

Soon after that, the Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday imposed a weekend curfew across the entire state and a night curfew on weekdays in all districts having more than 500 Covid-19 cases. While the night curfew in these districts will be effective from 8 pm to 7 am next day starting Tuesday, the weekend curfew will be enforced from Friday 8 pm to Monday 7 am, with all non-essential activities restricted.

These decisions, aimed at breaking the transmission chain of the virus, were taken at a meeting chaired by CM Yogi Adityanath in Lucknow. The night curfew was imposed earlier in Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Noida (Gautam Buddh Nagar), Allahabad, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Bareilly and Muzaffarnagar districts and the Lucknow Municipal Corporation area.

The action by the UP

government came hours after the Supreme Court stayed the Allahabad high court’s order which directed a week-long lockdown in the five cities that were to last till April 26.

Having ordered an interim stay of the high court’s lockdown order, the Supreme Court, however, directed the UP government to immediately inform the high court within a week on the steps it had taken and will take in future to check the spiralling Covid-19 cases.

“Until further orders, there shall be an interim stay of the order passed by the high court. However, the petitioner (the state government) shall immediately report to the high court about the steps it has taken and proposes to take in the immediate future within a period of one week in view of the current pandemic.”

The court appointed senior lawyer P.S. Narasimha as amicus curiae to assist the court in the matter. This came after solicitor general Tushar Mehta told the court that the high court passed the lockdown order in suo motu proceedings, thus there is no one to receive the notice issued by the top court on an appeal by the UP government.

Mr Mehta told the court the UP government has issued several directions to contain the spread of Covid-19 and was taking adequate precautions on their own. He further told the court the directions issued by the high court were as rigorous as a lockdown, though the high court observed that “they are nowhere close to a complete lockdown”. The Supreme Court has posted the matter for a further hearing after two weeks.