Don’t allow yatra to enter city: BJP MLAs to CM

NT Correspondent

Bengaluru: A few BJP legislators of Bengaluru City have exerted pressure on Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai not to allow the Congress padayatra to enter Bengaluru City following the explosion in Corona cases.

On Wednesday, the State clocked 21,090 cases with ten deaths out of which 15,200 cases were from Bengaluru City while six deaths were also recorded. This has rattled the state government and the health department as the situation is slowly going out of control.

Nandish Reddy, Ravisubramanya, Arvind Limbavali and Uday Garudachar, all BJP MLAs from Bengaluru, wanted the CM to take all steps to check the padayatra as there are chances of the positive cases breaching the 40,000- 50,000 mark. Already, the padayatra has reached Ramanagar City and it will start marching towards Bengaluru from Thursday. According to Congress leaders, thousands of workers from all over the State are expected to congregate in the city on January 19 in the culmination of the tenday padayatra which started from Sangama in Kanakapura taluk on January 9, under the leadership of KPCC President D.K.Shivakumar.

The ruling legislators felt that allowing thousands of workers into Bengaluru on January 19 would be a big mistake as the virus may spread to others. It would be very difficult to find out how many Congress workers from outside Bengaluru are corona positive as they would be asymptomatic. A huge number of cases will throw the government healthcare system out of gear. So far, the government has made arrangements to handle only a certain number of patients. If thousands of people test positive it would be simply impossible to handle the pressure.

The MLAs wanted the government to initiate drastic steps to prevent the padayatra from entering Bengaluru City. So far, the CM has not made any statement on the appeal.