First day of twice-a-week statewide lockdown today; admin, police on their toes

Kolkata: The state is all set to break the chain of the increasing number of COVID-19 cases with strict lockdown norms to be imposed on Thursday — the first day of the bi-weekly statewide lockdown announced by the Bengal government.

In the current week, the second statewide complete lockdown will be on Saturday.

Kolkata is expected to bear a completely different look on Thursday with even crowded markets remaining closed besides banks, post-offices, government and private offices along with all commercial establishments. Public and private transport will also not be allowed to operate. Only a set of essential services including home delivery of cooked food, e-commerce, health services, medicine shops and pharmacies, law and order, courts, correctional services, fire and emergency services, electricity, water and conservancy services will be allowed to operate.

Print, electronic media, social media and in-field job of agriculture and tea gardens will not get affected due to the lockdown.

Relaxations have also been given to functioning of factories and construction work with on-site labour (without any provision to travel), continuous process industries, industries with in-house workers, capital and debt market, and intrastate and interstate movement of goods.

The state Home department tweeted on Wednesday adding that petrol pumps will remain open on Thursday, Saturday and next Wednesday when the statewide lockdown will be implemented.

In a bid to make people aware of the nuances of the bi-weekly statewide lockdown with "broad-based" containment zone approach, both the Kolkata Police and the state police have carried out massive awareness campaigns. Police were found announcing at different places including busy markets about Thursday's lockdown using a public addressing system. This comes when containment zones in the state have gone up to 930, including 28 in Kolkata.

The statewide lockdown will be from 6 am to 10 pm on two days a week while "restrictions on the movement of individuals" apart from that of essential services will continue as usual from 10 pm to 5 am every day. There will be heavy deployment of police, mainly in all the urban parts of the state that witnessed a spike in the number of COVID-19 cases.

The police will be going for "zero tolerance" and strict steps will be taken against the violators.

Subhankar Sinha Sarkar, Joint Commissioner of Police (Headquarters), Kolkata Police, said: "Police pickets have been set up at strategic locations besides naka checking to curb the movement of unauthorised vehicles."

A senior officer of the state police said there will be close watch at every area and immediate steps would be taken in case anyone is found coming out of their houses without any valid reason.

On Wednesday, town-based lockdown was also imposed at different urban spots in Burdwan, Birbhum and Baranagar, situated on the outskirts of Kolkata.