Supreme Court stays High Court order on lockdown in Uttar Pradesh

New Delhi/Lucknow: The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the Allahabad high court’s order directing a lockdown in five Uttar Pradesh cities — Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi and Gorakhpur.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Sharad A. Bobde and comprising Justices A.S. Bopanna and V. Ramasubramanian passed the stay order on a plea by the UP government against Monday’s high court order.

Soon after that, the Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday imposed a weekend curfew across the entire state and a night curfew on weekdays in all districts having more than 500 Covid-19 cases.

While the night curfew in these districts will be effective from 8 pm to 7 am next day starting Tuesday, the weekend curfew will be enforced from Friday 8 pm to Monday 7 am, with all non-essential activities restricted.

These decisions, aimed at breaking the transmission chain of the virus, were taken at a meeting chaired by CM Yogi Adityanath in Lucknow.

The night curfew was imposed earlier in Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Noida (Gautam Buddh Nagar), Allahabad, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Bareilly and Muzaffarnagar districts and the Lucknow Municipal Corporation.