Will polls in 5 states get postponed amid Covid-19? Decision today

The Election Commission of India (ECI) will hold a meeting with senior officials of the Union ministry of health and family welfare, including Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan, on Monday to discuss the current Covid-19 situation ahead of the assembly polls in five states next year, reports said.

Assembly elections are due in five states including Uttar Pradesh, Manipur, Uttarakhand, Goa and Punjab in 2022.

“The Election Commission of India will convene a meeting on December 27 at 11am with senior officials of the ministry of health and family welfare, including secretary Rajesh Bhushan. The meeting will discuss the prevailing Covid-19 situation for upcoming assembly elections in five states,” news agency quoted a person familiar with the development as saying.

The meeting will come days after the Allahabad High Court requested the Election Commission to immediately postpone the assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh for one to two months amid rising cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

Last Thursday, the high court also urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ECI to immediately ban rallies and public meetings of political parties in the state.

On December 23, Bhushan directed the poll-bound states to “exponentially ramp up vaccination”, especially in the “low coverage districts” to protect the vulnerable population.

The directions came just hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with officials amid the rising cases of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.

The Union health ministry has also sent multidisciplinary teams to Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. The teams will assess the situation, suggest remedial actions and submit a report every evening by 7pm.

They will specifically look at contact tracing, including surveillance, containment operations; Covid-19 testing, including sending of adequate samples from clusters to INSACOG network for genome sequencing; Covid appropriate behaviour and its enforcement; availability of hospital beds, ventilators and medical oxygen; and vaccination progress.

Meanwhile, data compiled across states showed the number of infections of the Omicron variant detected across India on Sunday crossed the 500-mark, even as more than 150 of these cases have already recovered.

As many as 77 new cases of the heavily mutated Omicron variant were reported on Sunday and the number of states and Union territories that have reported these infections has now touched 19.

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