Courts Order Lockdowns: Judicial Activism?
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-04-19 15:27:07
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack
View all posts by this Author
The judiciary today came down heavily on two state governments for their handling of the Covid situation. While the Allahabad High Court went all the way and asked the UP government to lock down 5 cities in the state for 6 days beginning tonight, the Telangana High Court gave a 48-hour ultimatum to the state government to decide on curfews or lockdown before it took a decision.
The Allahabad High Court said that the UP government's handling of the Covid situation left a lot to be desired and in view of the surging cases in the state, it directed the government to impose lockdown (while permitting essential services to function normally, but ordering that all hawkers go off the streets after 11 am) in five cities - Lucknow, Prayagraj, Varanasi, Kanpur and Gorakhpur - from 10 pm tonight till 6 am on Monday, April 26. Stating that it had to save lives and livelihood, the state government has, as of now, decided not to impose the lockdown. It has said that it will take a considered decision in the matter as early as possible.
The Telengana High Court, on the other hand, asked the state government to take a decision regarding imposing curfew or lockdown and other restrictions in the state in view of the alarming surge in coronavirus cases. It has warned the government that if it does not get an 'action taken' report within 48 hours, it will be constrained to issue orders.
While the executive will consider this as the judiciary trespassing in its domain, the crux of the matter is that with the virus spreading at an alarming speed, governments in all states are guilty of laxity and prevarication. Their response to the second wave, as also of the Centre, has been arbitrary and extremely slow. State governments have only recently started enforcing the Covid health protocols (liking fining people for not wearing masks) when it was known from March-end that the public needed to be disciplined. There is no doubt that we need to protect livelihood of people and lockdown are huge disrupters of economic activity, but the point is that if administrations all over India had imposed basic restriction and were strict from March, perhaps the need for lockdowns would not have arisen.
If courts are ordering lockdowns now, it is only because they see lakhs of infected persons and piling dead bodies. They also see that things are getting out of hand and neither the Centre nor the state governments have disclosed a strong and coordinated programme to control the situation. Can one fault them for this?
