Coronavirus: Over 200 staying in Delhi gurudwara shifted out

Over 200 people staying in a gurudwara in north Delhi were on Wednesday shifted to a school, hours after authorities completed the shifting of over 2,000 inmates of Tablighi Jamaat, which was linked to at least 11 COVID-19 deaths and over 150 cases across the country.

Officials said 210 people, who were "stranded" at the Majnu Ka Tila Sahib Gurudwara following the lockdown, were shifted to a school in Nehru Vihar. They were taken to the school in buses arranged by the police.

On Tuesday as authorities shifted over 2,000 people from Taglibhi Jamaat headquarters in south Delhi's Nizamuddin, DSGMC President Manjinder Singh Sirsa tweeted an appeal to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Punjab counterpart Amarinder Singh asking them to evacuate those stranded in the gurudwara to a facility.

"More than 300 people of Punjab are here at Gurdwara Majnu Ka Tila Sahib. They need help from the Punjab government to reach their homes. It would be a disaster if anyone of them is COVID-19 positive," Sirsa had tweeted on Tuesday evening.

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In another tweet, he had described the situation as alarming and that these people need to be taken to their respective places in Punjab before it results in disaster. In a video posted on Twitter, he also said these people have reached the gurudwara on foot and have been staying there since March 28. "Some are unwell, some are coughing. What will happen if someone is infected," he said.

A woman, who was shown in another video posted by Sirsa, among those stranded in the gurudwara said there are several women and children among this group.

The incident has sent alarm bells as it came close on the heels of the Tablighi Jamaat incident, prompting states to initiate a frantic search for people who attended a religious gathering in Delhi on March 13-15 after several cases with links to it surfaced in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir among other places.

The Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee (DSGMC) had on March 23 written to Delhi Chief Minister offering the gurudwara in Majnu Ka Tila for using it as a quarantine centre. It has an "inn" with 20 rooms where quarantine facility could be set up, it had said.