Dual threat to state in election season
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: December 29, 2021 -

AMID hectic election-related activities, detection of first Omicron case in the state is indeed scary as presence of the highly transmissible variant of Covid-19 has the potential to aggravate the pandemic situation months after a semblance of returning to normalcy.

While lessening impact from the latest mutant of the contagious disease to the hectic election process going on in the state will rest on how the health authorities respond to the situation and adherence to the safety protocols by the public, another issue of concern associated with the upcoming election is the official acknowledgement by the Election Commission of India on Monday of the influence of drugs in elections.

Apart from confirmation of the Omicron case, three members of the infected person also found to be Covid-19 positive has laid bare the fact that over-reliance on the home isolation policy is not the best means to fight the wily virus for multiple infections in the same family indicates non-compliance with the prescribed rules and regulations in the real sense.

It is questionable why the government has to be hell-bent on the home isolation policy as such a measure was already found ineffective during the Delta-variant triggered second wave since mid-2020.

Moreover, when the pandemic broke out and state's natives in thousands returned home, all of them were put up in institutional, community and village level quarantine centres.

As it had been proven that prompt isolation of the returnees was decisive in keeping the pandemic situation under control, government's seeming hesitancy in adopting the same effective policy for a handful of international travellers is akin to aiding aggravation of the situation.

Nevertheless, with elections round the corner it is obvious that the government authorities would either put curbs on public activities or exert pressure on the healthcare and frontline workers to prevent possible spread of the infectious disease as had. been the case in the first two waves.

Due to the importance generally accorded to conduct of elections as was evident when the by-elections were held during the height of the second wave, the health department too would be under tremendous pressure to minimise spread of the infection either through effective containment measures or by under-reporting exact count of positive cases.

Accepted that tackling the pandemic will entail collaborative efforts of government institutions and machinery ably assisted by the public with hearty adherence to some of the simple safety guidelines.

However, it is the instructions given by the Union health secretary to top brass of the Narcotics Control Bureau to check the influence of drugs in elections which not only corroborated perennial expression of apprehension by anti-drug campaigners that causative effects of elections bring more miseries to the Manipuri society than any good.

In Manipur's context, the advice of the commission to top officials of ITBP, BSF and SSB for maintaining strict vigil on international borders to prevent proliferation of drugs in elections will depend on efficiency of the local police and proactive involvement of the anti-drug CSOs for psychotropic substances such as opium and brown sugar are abundantly grown and produced in different corners of the state in addition to strong suspicion that some political figures use drug money to fund their poll campaign.