NEW DELHI, July 14: Taking suo motu cognizance of the Uttar Pradesh government allowing conditional “Kanwar Yatra” amidst the on-going Covid-19 pandemic even when the Uttarakhand government has banned it, the Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notices to the central and the UP governments and scheduled the hearing of the matter for July 16.
Even after the Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Dhami ordered cancellation of the “Kanwar Yatra” stating that saving lives of the people was the government’s primary responsibility, the UP government on Wednesday decided that it allow the “yatra” to go on as per schedule making negative Covid report mandatory for joining it.
“It’s status quo in UP. We are talking to kanwar sanghs and everything will be done within the Covid-19 protocol. Even if devotees come from other states to UP, they will have to follow those protocols,” additional chief secretary (home), Awanish Kumar Awasthi said.
Kanwar Yatra is an annual pilgirmmage wherein Lord Shiva devotees travel either on foot or bicycle to fetch the holy water of the Ganga from Uttarakhand’s Haridwar to their village shrines. This year the yatra is scheduled to start from July 25 onwards.
The Yogi Adityanath government has allowed the yatra despite concerns raised in various quarters over the risk posed by such events in triggering a possible third wave. UP Additional Chief Secretary (Information) Navneet Sehgal said a response to the court’s notice will be provided in the given time. “As of now we have received information only through the media. Once the notice is received by concerned authorities, an answer will be sent. The government will take decision and guidelines will be issued in time. As of now, the stand of the government is that they have allowed Kanwar yatra in the state. The yatra is scheduled to begin on July 25 and there is still a lot of time,” he said.
Officials said that in 2019, the last time the yatra was organised, nearly 3.5 crore devotees (kanwariyas) had visited Haridwar while over 2-3 crore people had visited pilgrimage spots in Western UP.
As part of the yatra, kanwariyas trek up to or drive to ghats of the Ganga, and fill pitchers with water from the river before making the journey back to their towns and villages. While much of the traffic is usually headed to Haridwar, pilgrims also go to the UP districts of Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahr, Hapur, Amroha, Shamli, Saharanpur, Agra, Aligarh, Bareilly, Kheri, Barabanki, Ayodhya, Varanasi, Basti, Sant Kabir Nagar, Gorakhpur, Jhansi, Bhadohi, Mau, Sitapur, Mirzapur and Lucknow.
The Uttarakhand government cancelled the Kanwar Yatra this year in view of the Covid-19 crisis. The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by the chief minister on Tuesday after which Dhami said, “We don’t want to make Haridwar the centre of Covid-19.”
The Indian Medical Association’s (IMA) state secretary Dr Amit Khanna had in a letter to Dhami requested the newly-appointed chief minister to refrain from holding the Kanwar Yatra. “After the first wave, we became off-guard and could not follow the guidelines of the central government…which was a gross negligence on our part…and consequently lost several of our kind in…the second wave of Covid pandemic,” he stated. Khanna further pointed out that keeping in mind the previous failures, the Kanwar Yatra should not be allowed to keep Uttarakhand “safe from third Covid wave.”
A similar massive gathering of the people during “Kumbh Mela” in March-April had triggered off the killer second wave in Uttarakhand and other parts of the country.
On July 6, Uttarakhand had decided to stop all Kanwar Yatra devotees from entering the state, but took the decision to review the move two days later after UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath called Dhami. Notably, both the states go into Assembly polls next year.
(Manas Dasgupta)