All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi has written to Home Minister Amit Shah, seeking the discharge of 38 people from Telengana who have been kept in quarantine centres in Delhi since March 30.
They had attended the Tablighi Jamaat congregation at Nizamuddin Markaz (centre) in Delhi in March. The Delhi police have registered a case against the organisers for allowing thousands to congregate at the centre at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic in early March when the lockdown was not imposed.
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Mr. Owaisi said in his letter that all their tests had returned negative, but they were unable to return home because of the “sudden, successive extensions of the lockdown period and the consequent absence of any inter-State...transport”.
“In light of your Ministry’s recent notification permitting migrants to return to their home States, I request that the concerned persons be discharged from the quarantine facilities and issued a pass to travel to Telengana,” the letter said.
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The inmates have been quarantined at various facilities in the Narela Industrial Area, Sultanpuri, Lok Nayak Hospital, Badarpur Secondary School and Mandoli.
On April 2, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued a standard operating procedure for movement of people completing quarantine in government facilities. It said, “Persons testing negative for COVID-19 would be released... however, this will not apply to a group wherein even one person tests positive, and these persons are to return to their homes by making their own transport arrangements.”
“The transit pass will be issued for a fixed route and with a specified validity,” the MHA said.
It also asked such persons to quarantine themselves at home for another 14 days and their details would be shared with the State and Union Territory concerned for follow-up.
A Delhi government spokesperson said on Sunday that the criterion for allowing those under institutional quarantine to return home was based mainly on two consecutive negative tests. So far, the spokesperson pointed out, the inter-State borders had been sealed, and they were now “opened” in accordance with the MHA’s guidelines for the movement of some categories of individuals.
“The guidelines for allowing the inter-State movement of individuals are the same for everyone, irrespective of whether or not they were part of the Nizamuddin Markaz [congregation], and all State governments are in the process of planning this movement,” the spokesperson said.
“The Delhi government, too, is in touch with other State governments... All the residents of those States, across categories, will be allowed to move as per the procedure decided between the Delhi government and their respective State governments,” the spokesperson said.