Wiser Counsel Should Prevail Upon CEC Over UP Polls, Let There Be Virtual Campaigns

By D N Singh

Dec, 30: Covid or Omicron but there is always a dividing line between the privileged mass and the larger one as regards being spreaders of the virus.

Restrictions are, almost, in place right from schools to colleges, from shopping destinations to local bazars, from places of worship to grounds for revelries. SOPs have been fixed and sounded. That is what is the need of the hour.

But why this discrimination in yardsticks. If common men’s avenues can be locked by guidelines, why this sovereignty for politics?

Reports suggest that all the political parties are on the verge of a unanimity to support the holding of elections in Uttar Pradesh on schedule.

The Chief Election Commission may not have a much different opinion regardless of the scary reality on the ground and i.e the furious resurge of the Covid and Omicron all over the world, including India.

It may be recalled that, during the first wave of Covid, when the entire world got panic-stuck by the virus, back in India the politics had a free ride. When election rallies got an accelerated pace in West Bengal!

And there was no exercise of wisdom either by the leaders or the medical fraternity or even the judiciary to stop the campaigns or an advice of sanity. Whatever was heard through the media, was given a damn.

Election rallies, where over one lakh people gathered, there the guidelines but just frittered away by the teaming crowd. Infections were the ultimate culminations and it did happened.

It will be a fatal oversight if the CEC ignores the ground reality and gives its nod for the elections to be held in UP, preceded by huge campaigns.

Or virtual mode of campaign can be a saner alternative but, will the leaders agree? That is a bigger question.

But what can be made out of the stance of the CEC, it seems swayed by the sentiments of the political parties than the dangers.