Maharashtra: How a video-conference on March 5 led to cancellation of Vashi’s Tablighi meet

“On March 5 … we checked our records and found that the Tablighi Jamaat event was scheduled for March 14-15. We cancelled it immediately along with a few other public hearings planned in the area,” Palghar Collector Kailash Shinde said. (Representational Image)

In the first week of March, when the state government through video-conference spoke to district-level administrators, including members of the local district administration and health professionals, on measures to contain the COVID-19 spread, the key instruction was: no public gathering or function should be allowed, and to cancel ones, if any, issued already.

The meeting, held on March 5, less than a week before Holi, eventually helped the Palghar district administration to cancel the Tablighi Jamaat meet at Vasai that was to be attended by around 50,000 people on March 14-15, and avoid a Delhi-like situation. So far, 1,023 COVID-19 positive cases found in 17 states across India have been traced to the Tablighi Jamaat congregation at Nizamuddin Markaz in New Delhi, held from March 13 to 15.

“On March 5, after the video-conference with Chief Secretary Ajoy Mehta, we checked our records and found that the Tablighi Jamaat event was scheduled for March 14-15. We cancelled it immediately along with a few other public hearings planned in the area,” Palghar Collector Kailash Shinde said.

On March 6, the tehsildar’s office wrote to the Vasai-based Shamim Education and Welfare Society, which had sought permission for the congregation. In the letter, the tehsildar informed the office-bearers of the society that previous permission granted to them was cancelled in the light of the coronavirus pandemic and they would not be allowed to use the government land they had taken on rent for the two-day meet.

Fazl-e-Haq Qureshi, a member of the working committee that was to organise the congregation, said, “The government has been claiming credit for cancelling the meet. However, when they cancelled the permission for the March 14-15 event, the tehsildar told us we could postpone it to April 11-12. Hence, we did not remove our electric meters, fans, lights, etc from the ground. We were there till March 20, but when we saw it was not possible to hold the event, given the spread of the virus, we took a decision to cancel the congregation.”

Qureshi asked that if the administration had cancelled the congregation, “why would they allow the entire set up for it to be kept there for more than two to three weeks”.