DNA Exclusive: Why COVID curbs are applicable for festivities but not on political activities?

When a common citizen can invite up to 200 people to a wedding and even fewer people to a funeral due to COVID-19 restrictions, political rallies can still be conducted with a crowd of over 2,000 people.

New Delhi: As Omicron cases continue to rise in India, most states like Maharashtra, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh have already imposed a curfew on festive gatherings. Going by the predictions, it seems like Indians will once again have to spend Christmas and New Year behind closed doors amid heavy restrictions.

However, one aspect - that remains untouched by these curbs - are elections and political rallies.

Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary on Thursday discussed how norms for politics and elections remained unchanged amid the pandemic, while the entire world learned to live differently with various protocols.

When a common citizen can invite only up to 200 people to a wedding and even fewer people to a funeral due to COVID-19 restrictions, political rallies can still be conducted with a huge crowd and blatant abuse of Covid norms

In a nutshell, the situation at present is such that if a common man invites more than 200 people to his wedding or celebrates Christmas with more than 50 people, he will be slapped with various charges in the name of flouting COVID norms, while at the same time, a politician can hold a rally with as many people as desired with no care of pandemic norms and nothing changes.

However, this must be noted that this scenario is not just prevalent in India but the same trend can be seen in the entire world.

Since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, elections have been conducted in 147 nations, out of which, countries like North Korea, Croatia, Mongolia, Singapore and Sri Lanka conducted elections despite heavy covid waves, which resulted in the huge spread of the virus and even deaths.