Lockdown imposed peacefully amid strict vigil
Kolkata: The eleventh complete statewide "twice-a-week" lockdown, that is likely to be the last one, on Friday passed off peacefully with strict steps taken by the police against those violating the lockdown norms.
The state government had introduced the "twice-a-week" complete lockdown on July 23 to break the chain of Covid infection. As per the announcement of the state government, Friday was the second and the last day of complete lockdown in September so far after the same on Saturday was withdrawn so that NEET examinees do not face any inconvenience in reaching their examination centres on Sunday.
Though according to a senior state government official "nobody knows tomorrow", it is being highly contemplated that no more complete lockdown will be imposed in the state with no further decision has been taken in this connection. But, the strict implementation of lockdown norms at the containment zones will continue to check the spread of the disease.
It may be mentioned that the Centre in its August 29 Unlock 4 guidelines had stated that any local lockdown outside containment zones cannot be imposed without prior consultation with them. Following such mention in the Centre's guideline, Banerjee had stated that the Centre must trust the states in a federal structure in which the Central government is like parents and the states are like children. Both the Centre and state governments are elected ones.
On Friday, the police maintained a close vigil with security barricades at all naka-checking points across the state to ensure that people do not violate the lockdown norms.
Kolkata Police arrested 882 people till 8 pm on Friday while West Bengal Police arrested 2,835 people till 6 pm from remaining parts of the state for violating lockdown norms. The state police seized 23 vehicles and 36 vehicles were prosecuted in Kolkata. The state police has imposed a fine of Rs 12000 on various charges of lockdown violation.
There were complete lockdown on three different days in July, six days in August and two days, so far, in September.
In all the eleven days of complete lockdown, the state police arrested more than 33,891 people while the Kolkata Police arrested around 9,000 people for lockdown violation.
