India extends lockdown to May 31, to relax rules in some areas
18 May, 2020
India on Sunday (May 17) extended a nationwide lockdown to May 31, as cases exceeded 90,000 and additional clashes erupted between police and stranded migrants.
Schools, malls and other public places will remain mostly closed, though rules will be relaxed in areas with low amounts of cases, according to an order from the interior ministry.
"New guidelines have permitted considerable relaxations in lockdown restrictions," the ministry said in a tweet accompanying the order.
Large gatherings are still prohibited, but beyond containment zones with high amounts of active cases "all the activities will be permitted", it said, potentially allowing commerce and industry to reopen across a lot of the country.
Decisions on where to set containment zones will be decided by district authorities, the order said.
India has now reported more cases than China, where the virus first emerged late this past year, although deaths at 2,872 remain lower than China's 4,600. The death toll in the usa and some Europe is much higher.
India's lockdown, introduced on Mar 25 and extended several times, had been because of expire at nighttime on Sunday.
The curbs have sparked an emergency for the vast sums of Indians who count on daily wages to survive.
Without work - and little public transport - many urban migrants wanting to return to their house villages have lay out on gruelling journeys by walking or hitched rides in the back of trucks.
In Rajkot in the western state of Gujarat, a lot more than 1,500 migrant employees blocked roads, damaged greater than a dozen vehicles and threw stones at police on Sunday, after two special trains which were supposed to take them home got cancelled.
A police official in Shapar told Reuters police baton-charged the migrants to disperse them, with several officers injured along the way.
"The workers hadn't gathered with the intention of violence. Several trains were rescheduled, but the staff misunderstood that the trains have been cancelled, and resorted to violence," Balram Meena, Rajkot’s superintendent of police, told local media.
"We are identifying the persons who were involved in the violence," Meena added.
At least 23 migrants were killed trying to reach their homes on Saturday whenever a truck crashed in northern India.
Sixteen migrant personnel died on May 8 after being struck by a train. They had fallen asleep on the tracks while walking back again to their village after losing their jobs in a coronavirus lockdown, police said.
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