Chandigarh to review weekend lockdown

Dushyant Singh Pundir

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 21

A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that lockdown should be the last resort for state governments, the UT Administration decided to review the implementation of the weekend lockdown in the city.

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“The weekend lockdown will be reviewed at a meeting soon. However, no final decision has been taken on imposing a seven-day lockdown in the city,” said UT Adviser Manoj Parida.

Meanwhile, markets wore a deserted look as the one-day lockdown threw life out of gear in the city today.

To prevent religious gatherings, the UT Administration had yesterday decided to impose a complete lockdown in the city on the occasion of Ram Navami today. All non- essential activities were prohibited during the lockdown. Sukhna Lake and other parks also remained out of bounds.

Most markets in the city, including those in Sector 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23 and 24, and malls remained closed. Essential commodity shops and vendors dealing in food, groceries, fruits and vegetable, dairy and milk booths, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment remained opened for home delivery. However, a few shopkeepers in Burail tried to open their shops of non-essential supplies, but the police forced them to pull down the shutters.

Being a holiday, all government and private offices also remained closed. Due to restrictions, there was thin traffic on the roads.

The Administration had exempted certain categories of people who need to go out during the curfew for necessary services and activities like vaccination, as all vaccination centres, testing centres, dispensaries and medical facilities remained open during the lockdown.

The Chandigarh Transport Undertaking (CTU) operated skeletal bus service on local routes. Most of the buses ran with a few passengers. Nearly 70 buses were operated by depot number 1 and 72 by depot number 2 on both long and local routes, while nearly 50 buses ran on local routes from depot numbers 3 and 4.

In view of sudden increase in the number of Covid-19 cases, the UT Administration yesterday extended the timings of the night curfew by two hours. The new timings now are from 8 pm to 5 am.

Traders’ meet today

The Chandigarh Beopar Mandal (CBM) has decided to hold a meeting on Thursday to decide on steps to be taken to stop further lockdowns in the city. Charanjiv Singh, president, CBM, said they had demanded an urgent meeting with the UT Administrator in this regard. He said small and medium traders were still to recover the losses suffered during the previous lockdown.