West Bengal minister’s protest over farm laws stalls vaccine convoy

COVID-19 deaths in State near 10,000

Members of medical staff work inside an isolation ward of a hospital to deal with COVID-19 patients at Sagar Island, around 150 km south of Kolkata.

West Bengal on Wednesday recorded 18 deaths due to COVID-19 in the past 24 hours taking the total fatalities in the State to 9,993.

The State recorded 723 new infections in the past 24 hours taking the total infections to 5,62,795. The active cases dropped to 7,303 and the discharge rate dropped to 96.93%.

Meanwhile, a day after COVID-19 vaccines arrived in the city, a truck carrying the emergency medical supply was forced to take a detour in Purba Bardhaman district and remained stuck in traffic as protesters demanding an immediate withdrawal of the farm laws laid siege of the Burdwan-Durgapur highway.

The protests were organised by Minister Siddiqullah Chowdhury, who is also head of West Bengal’s Jamiat Ulama-E-Hind.

Videos aired by local television channel showed that Mr Siddiqullah was trying to disperse his supporters. The Minister also took a stick in his hand and tried to clear the National Highway personally.

“Our stage was not on the highway; it was near the Eidgah next to the road but some protesters were sitting on the road. When I heard about the vehicle carrying vaccines, I told the police to give it passage. Accordingly, the police escorted the vehicle through an alternative route. There was no problem,” Mr. Chowdhury claimed.

Purba Bardhaman’s Superintendent of Police Bhaskar Mukhopadhyay said that the vaccine-carrying insulated van was diverted over a distance of five km through a village owing to the blockade of the national highway, connecting Kolkata and New Delhi, at the Galsi area.

The delay in the movement of the vehicle was for the time taken to cover the five km distance through the village, he said.

Unofficial sources, however, claimed that the vehicle had to traverse village roads for a distance of 20 km before it could be brought back to the national highway.

The BJP leadership dubbed the Minister’s action as “political double standards”. Party leader Kailash Vijayvargiya tweeted videos of the protest and asked who would have taken responsibility if the truck had suffered any damage during the transit.

Another BJP leader Shishir Bajoria said it was unfortunate that a State Minister was blocking the vaccine delivery. Vaccination for the first phase for frontline medical staff will start from January 16.