Coronavirus | Restrictions on Pune’s shops lifted

According major relief to Pune’s shopkeepers, restaurateurs and traders, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Sunday announced significant relaxations in pandemic-related curbs by permitting shops and restaurants to henceforth remain open till 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., respectively.

While malls, too, have been allowed to stay open till 8 p.m., only people who have availed of both vaccine doses will be allowed to enter. Likewise, permission has been granted for all sports and outdoor activities till 8 p.m.

Hotels and restaurants will continue to operate at 50% capacity. Testing mandatory for mall staff every 15 days. Hotels in rural areas will remain open only till 4 p.m.

Mr. Pawar, who is also the Guardian Minister of Pune district, reviewed the COVID-19 situation in the wake of traders’ associations in Pune city growing increasingly dissatisfied with the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government for not lifting restrictions despite the city seeing a comparatively low daily case surge of 200-250 cases.

The clamour to lift restrictions has been growing louder ever since Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray relaxed curbs in 25 districts (excluding Pune, Kolhapur and nine others) in the State.

“While we have relaxed norms in Pune city, the curbs will immediately be re-imposed in the event the case positivity rate exceeds 7%,” Mr. Pawar warned.

The district has been reporting around 1,000 cases daily with the majority of the surge witnessed in rural parts. Cases in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, in contrast, continue to remain fairly low, with positivity rates dipping to 3.3% and 3.5%, respectively.

At the same time, Mr. Pawar strongly cautioned citizens against letting down their guard, and insisted they continue to wear masks and maintain COVID-19 appropriate behaviour.

“Strict adherence to pandemic rules is essential to ensure that even if the number of victims is reduced, it will not increase again. Before the second wave, there was rampant overcrowding and flouting of norms, which led to a rise in cases and fatalities. We had to pay a heavy price for that…so, I appeal to both elected representatives and citizens to cooperate with the State government on this…let us not bring politics into the lockdown argument. We, too, sympathise with businesses who are suffering economically and have no wish to impose restrictions if we can help it,” the Deputy Chief Minister said.

He said that while Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad are being granted considerable relaxations, Pune Rural will have to comply with restrictions until its case positivity rate went down.

“The rural case positivity rate is 5.5%…even then, we have introduced ‘level three’ regulations [instead of the earlier ‘level four’] in 13 talukas of the region,” he said.

Citing huge monetary losses, traders and shopkeepers in Pune city had earlier warned the State government that they would be compelled to flout pandemic restrictions on shop timings and keep their establishments beyond 4 p.m., unless the State or the district administration lifted curbs.