Two months after internet hosting over 36 lakh folks for Kumbh MelaJust earlier than the second Covid wave, the BJP authorities in Uttarakhand has canceled the annual Kanwar Yatra within the state, citing the pandemic.
On Tuesday, state police officers appealed to authorities in neighboring states to ask devotees to not come to Haridwar for the annual pilgrimage this month to gather water from the Ganga. The yatra was not organized final yr attributable to COVID restrictions.
The enchantment for this yr was issued throughout an inter-state coordination assembly chaired by DGP Ashok Kumar with law enforcement officials from Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Delhi on the yatra.
The DGP mentioned these getting into Haridwar for the journey can be booked below the Disaster Management Act and Epidemic Diseases Act, and can be positioned below quarantine as per the COVID tips.
During the assembly, Uttarakhand Police instructed that devotees can ship tankers to gather water from Ganga by coordinating on the police station degree.
The police took this step following a latest order issued by the state’s city improvement division, banning the Kanwar Yatra this yr in view of Kovid.
In 2019, round 3.5 crore devotees – referred to as Kanwariyas – visited Haridwar for the yatra, up from 2.8 crore in 2018. Officials mentioned most of them had been from western UP and Haryana, adopted by a number of others from Delhi and Rajasthan.
Last week, the state authorities had suspended the Char Dham Yatra until additional discover, after the Uttarakhand High Court stayed for 4 weeks its resolution to permit pilgrimage for native residents of the three districts with impact from July 1.
When the Kumbh was formally underway on April 1, Haridwar had 626 energetic circumstances. On April 30, when the truthful ended, there have been 11,075 energetic circumstances within the district. At least 17,226 new circumstances and 90 deaths had been reported within the district between April 1 and April 30, based on well being division information.
Since then, Uttarakhand has seen political turmoil, with Tirath Singh Rawat as chief minister changing Trivendra Singh Rawat himself, who was changed by Pushkar Singh Dhami final week.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
