1/5. Some 713 schoolteachers have died after compulsory duty as officials in UP’s panchayat polls where all protections and distancing protocols were absent. Their unions’ appeals for postponement of the polls were rejected. Story link at end of thread.
#COVID19 #Election2021

2/5. UP government questions any connection being made between these deaths in April and the panchayat polls. “How do you know they were not already corona positive, before going for their duty?” asks Minister of state for primary education S.C. Dwivedi.
#COVID19 #Election2021

3/5. Fact: In 15 months of the pandemic, UP reported 6.3 lakh Covid-19 cases. In 30 days around the polls since April 4, it logged 8 lakh new cases – more than in the preceding 15. Meanwhile the death toll and new cases are both mounting.
#COVID19 #Election2021

4/5. Pleas to the Election Commission (to merge voting phases in Bengal) and to UP state EC for postponement were ignored. Several courts flayed both ECI and State EC. Madras High Court told ECI “Your officers should be booked on murder charges, probably.”
#COVID19 #Election2021

5/5. Devastating government and institutional failure is escalating the misery of Uttar Pradesh’s schoolteachers and other public servants but the state remains in denial. Are GoI and UP govt taking the pandemic seriously at all?
#COVID19 #Election2021 https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/articles/up-panchayats-for-whom-the-polls-toll/