Home ministry set to come up with uniform COVID lockdown guidelines for all states

New Delhi: Concerned that some States have once again started imposing limited lockdown, Union Home Ministry will soon come out with detailed guidelines so that there can be a uniform policy across all States and Union Territories for the same.

States including Punjab, Haryana, Bihar and some others have once again imposed lockdown in different forms like on weekends or a night curfew in view of rising cases of Corona.

 On Saturday Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla had written to States to ensure that movement of essential and goods and services is not affected due these local lockdowns.

Officials claimed it was observed that these "local lockdowns" being imposed by States and the concerned district administration was affecting the movement of goods and trucks of even essential commodities and this in turn was impacting the supply chain.

Now the Home Ministry feels there was a need to have a uniform set of guidelines which can be implemented across all States and UTs.

In view of the sharp increase in number of Corona cases and fearing its community spread, particularly in rural areas and smaller cities, some States have once again gone in for some sort of lockdown or restrictions.

It is being anticipated that in the coming days some other States could also do the same. Hence, the need for uniform guidelines was felt and these are now being prepared to help a better co-ordination between Centre and States.

"The idea is to ensure that both health and economy are not ignored. We need to ensure that economic activity also continues without being careless about health of the common people from Corona. So we will strike a balance between both health protocols and economic activities and come out with some sort of norms," a senior Ministry official said.