‘You turned turtle’: Delhi High Court’s sharp takedown of Arvind Kejriwal on Covid measures

Coronavirus surge in Delhi: As the national capital grapples with the fresh spike in the Covid-19 infections, the Arvind Kejriwal government got an earful from the Delhi High Court on Thursday. The Aam Aadmi Party leadership was questioned for its delayed response to the increasing number of cases in Delhi. The Bench of Justice Hima Kohli and Justice Subramonium Prasad said that the Delhi government was sleeping over the surge and didn’t act in time. The court said that it was only after the judicial intervention that the Kejriwal government acted and decided to revise the number of guests attending weddings in the national capital. In a sharp takedown, the court asked the government as to how will it convince those who lost their loved ones in the pandemic about the unexplainable 18-day delay in taking fresh measures.

The terse observations of the High Court came on a day when the AAP government held an all-party meet to tackle the coronavirus infections. In the biggest single-day rise in number of Covid-related complications, 131 citizens of the National Capital lost their lives on Wednesday. The number of infections has breached the 5-lakh mark.

Amid rising cases, the Kejriwal government is also facing the ire of the traders due to fear of lockdowns or fresh regulations. Though the government has repeatedly said that there would be no lockdown in near future, the shopkeepers are worried. Among the latest steps taken to curb the viral infection, random testing of people is being conducted at Delhi-Noida border. These checkpoints are now becoming the new testing centres. The officials have said that the testing is voluntary.

The National Capital Region, which includes suburbs of Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad have been a headache for the corona warriors. Due to high population density, the entire region is prone to community transmission. However, officially, there has been no confirmation on that.