Supreme Court issues notice to state, Centre

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday took suo motu cognisance of a disturbing news on Uttar Pradesh government's decision to allow 'Kanwar Yatra' amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and sought responses from the state as well as the Centre "given the disparate political voices" on the matter. A bench headed by Justice R F Nariman referred to the statement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that not even a bit of compromise can be made on Covid-19 containment and said the citizens were perplexed about the happenings in view of the fact that as the UP government has allowed the religious 'yatra' commencing from July 25.

It issued notices to the Centre and the state governments of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand while posting the matter for hearing on Friday. The bench, also comprising Justice B R Gavai, said that it was "little disturbed" to read that UP has chosen to continue with the Kanwar yatra, while Uttarakhand with its hindsight of experience, has decided against it.

The apex court took suo motu of a news paper report and issued notice to the Union of India and the States of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand to file their early response.

Concerns are mounting in Indonesia over the ability of its regions to cope with a spike in coronavirus cases, according to its health minister, as the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads quickly across the world's largest archipelago.

Indonesia is struggling to slow the pace of Covid-19 transmission, with record daily case numbers on six of the past 10 days, including 47,899 new infections on Tuesday, despite new containment measures.

38,792 new Covid cases

India recorded 38,792 new coronavirus cases, taking the infection tally to 3,09,46,074, while the death toll reached 4,11,408 with 624 more fatalities, according to the Union Health Ministry's data updated on Wednesday. The active cases have declined to 4,29,946 and comprise 1.39 per cent of the total infections, while the national COVID-19 recovery rate stands at 97.28 per cent, the data updated at 8 am showed. A decrease of 2,832 cases has been recorded in the active COVID-19 caseload in a span of 24 hours.

Even though the second wave has ebbed, the increased presence of the Delta variant and the subsequent mutations of the coronavirus makes the third wave a real risk for the country, a foreign brokerage has warned. The risks are real and rising because the pace of vaccination has slowed down to under 3.4 million doses daily from 4 million earlier and also as many as 45 per cent of the daily infections are being reported from rural areas, points Tanvee Gupta-Jain, the chief economist at UBS Securities India.