JOIN USPolls in the time of pandemic
“O King, in your Ram-Rajya, the corpses are flowing along the Ganges’’, Parul Khakkar wrote in May 2021, as countless bodies of the suspected Covid-19 victims flew down the holy river, with hundreds of them washing up on its banks in Uttar Pradesh. Her poem, titled “Shav-Vahihi Ganga” and originally written in Gujarati, was translated in Hindi, English and several other languages as it went viral on social media. It was a poignant indictment of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for its failure to prevent the catastrophe the nation witnessed during the brutal second wave of the pandemic.
A year has not yet turned its circle. Even as the memories of the macabre dance of death have not yet faded, the Holy River is now set to witness the celebration of democracy on its banks. Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand will go to the polls in February and March. So will Punjab, Goa and Manipur.
The assembly elections are being held even as the long shadow of the Covid-19 is still looming large. The Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is again spreading fast. The active Covid-19 cases in the country reached 472,169 with 141,986 new cases being detected in the last 24 hours.
The five poll-bound states are also not being spared as the much-anticipated third wave of the pandemic has already hit the country.
Uttar Pradesh, the largest of the poll-bound states, at present has 12,327 active Covid-19 cases, with as many as 4,103 people being tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 infection in the past 24 hours. Punjab and Uttarakhand reported 2,738 and 597 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the total number of active cases to 9,425 and 2,022 in the two states respectively. Goa and Manipur now have 5,931 and 346 active cases, with 1,318 and 30 people being tested positive in the past 24 hours, according to the latest data released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).
Five of the eight people infected by the Omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in Uttarakhand have recovered so far. Goa reported 19 cases of infection by Omicron, but all of them have recovered. Uttar Pradesh has confirmed 31 Covid-19 cases caused by the Omicron, while six of the infected people have already recovered. Manipur and Punjab reported one and two cases of infection by Omicron, but all of them have already recovered.
Though over 95.8% and 82.39% of the eligible population have been fully inoculated against the Covid-19 in Goa and Uttarakhand, only 52% and 45.6% in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab have received both doses of the vaccines. Only 44.8% of the eligible population in Manipur had been jabbed with both the doses. The EC, however, asked the state governments that all the poll-officials in the five states must be administered with, not only the two doses of the vaccine, but also the booster doses.
With strict adherence to social distancing norms being the key to keep the SARS-CoV-2 away, speculation was rife about the possibility of the assembly elections in the five states being deferred.
Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav of the Allahabad High Court in fact on December 23 last asked the Election Commission to consider postponing the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh as the third wave of the pandemic was “knocking at the door”. The EC, however, went ahead and decided to stick to the timeline to hold the assembly polls in all the five states, where the terms of the existing legislative assemblies will end between March 15 and May 14 next. “Every Legislative Assembly of every state, unless sooner dissolved, shall continue for five years...and no longer...,” Chief Election Commissioner, Sushil Chandra, quoted from the Article 172 (1) of the Constitution of India, as he announced the schedule of the polls on Saturday. He said that postponement of the assembly polls would deny the citizens the right to elect an accountable government of their choice.
The assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa are not going to be the first elections to be held under the shadow of the Covid-19. The EC had conducted the assembly elections in Bihar in October and November 2020, when the first wave of the pandemic had started to wane. It conducted the voting for the assembly polls in the four states – Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal – as well as the Union Territory of Puducherry in March and April, 2020, even as the second wave of the pandemic wreaked havoc across the country.
The EC had on August 21, 2020, issued a guideline for safely conducting polls at the time of the pandemic. It was however criticized for failing to enforce the norms like wearing masks and maintaining social distancing during campaigning in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Puducherry. The Madras High Court on April 26, 2021 observed that the EC was “singularly responsible” for the second wave of the Covid-19 in the country and that its officers should probably be booked for murder. The EC, however, sought to pass the buck, by pointing out that the responsibility of enforcing the measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic had been assigned to the respective State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMAs), which had not imposed public gatherings under the Disaster Management Act 2005 when the assembly polls had taken place in March-April 2021. Even as the poll-panel issued an updated guideline to conduct elections amidst the pandemic on Saturday, the CEC once again stressed on the role of the SDMAs in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur to enforce the Covid-19 safety measures, including restrictions on holding campaign rallies.
The EC cited low weekly Covid-19 positivity rates in Uttar Pradesh (0.24%), Uttarakhand (1.01%), Punjab (2.1%) and Manipur (1.1%) to defend its decision to hold the assembly elections. Goa reported a 13% weekly positivity report, but the CEC attributed it to the New Year’s Day celebrations and presence of the outsiders in the coastal state.
“Akin Hai To Koi Rasta Nikalta Hai...(If you have faith, you will find a way out),” Chandra recited a couplet on Saturday, as he spelt out a slew of safety measures – like more polling booths to spread out voters and sanitization of polling booths – to be adopted to minimize the risk of Covid-19 surge during the forthcoming assembly elections. The people of the five states too will have to rely on the EC and hope that its safety measures will work and the Ganges will not have to turn into a “Shav-Vahini” (carrier of corpses) again.
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