Lockdown across Uttar Pradesh from 10 pm today till 5 am on July 13

Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh on Thursday announced a complete shutdown for 2 days starting from Friday 10 pm till Monday 5 am as Covid cases in the state continue to rise.

All offices, markets, urban and rural haats, grain markets, and commercial establishments will remain shut. During the lockdown period, the state will run a sanitisation and drinking water supply consolidation drive across Uttar Pradesh.

Late Thursday evening, the Uttar Pradesh chief secretary RK Tiwari issued an order that said, “Considering the current Covid-19 situation after a review that state government for containment of Covid-19 and some vector-borne diseases such as encephalitis, malaria, dengue, kala azar, the state government has imposed certain restrictions from 10 pm onwards from July 10 to 5 am on July 13.”

Listing the restrictions, the order said during the 2-day lockdown period, all offices, urban and rural haats, markets, grain markets, and commercial establishments etc will remain shut.

All essential services such as health services, essential commodities supply will operate as before and there will be no restriction on movements of such people working in these places including corona warriors and door-step delivery persons.

Railways will continue to operate the way it has been and the UP roadways would make arrangements to operate buses to ferry the passengers who arrive at the stations. However, barring these, UPSRTC buses would not operate anywhere in the state.

Apart from this, the goods transport will have no restrictions and traffic will be allowed on the national and the state highways.

In the order, the UP chief secretary also said the state would run an extensive sanitisation and drinking water supply consolidation drive and all the officers and employees related to the drive would be exempt from the restrictions. At the same time, the ongoing door-to-door Covid surveillance drive would continue unhindered and the industrial units in the rural areas and the continuous process establishments too would operate but with social distancing and associated Covid safety measures.

“The office identity card would serve as Covid pass for those people who are exempted from the restrictions,” the order read.

The ongoing large-scale construction activities such as expressways, big bridges, road, PWD’s big projects, government buildings and private projects too would continue to function.

The government has ordered all the district magistrates and police officers to ensure adequate surveillance and patrolling for adherence to the restrictions.