Justices Vineet Kothari and R. Suresh Kumar of the Madras High Court on Thursday wanted to know whether the State government had any plans to impose a complete lockdown in the territorial limits of the Greater Chennai Police, since the number of COVID-19 positive cases have been on the rise in the city for the last few days.

Justice Kumar raised the issue at the end of court proceedings and asked Government Pleader V. Jayaprakash Narayan about how the State had decided to tackle the current situation. Making it clear that he was posing the question as a common man and in public interest, he pointed out that the situation was grim.

Despite all efforts taken by the government to contain the spread of the pandemic, the number of people getting affected by the disease in Chennai appears to be on a high note, the judge pointed out. He wanted to know whether officials were contemplating imposition of a complete lockdown in Chennai city to control the spread.

In his reply, Mr. Narayan told the court that he had no instructions on the issue at present, and assured the court of ascertaining the details by Friday. He said the government had appointed senior IAS officer J. Radhakrishnan to coordinate COVID-19 related issues in the Greater Chennai Corporation limits and hence he would obtain the details from him.

Though a public interest litigation petition had also been filed in the High Court seeking a direction to the State government to withdraw all relaxations related to the lockdown to fight COVID-19 and permit only essential services within the territorial limits of Greater Chennai police, it was not listed for admission before the Division Bench on Thursday.

The petition filed by advocate N. Tamilarasu, 32, of Okkiyam Thoraippakkam, stated that more than 7 million people had tested positive for COVID-19 and over 4 lakh had died so far across the globe. In India, there were over 1.33 lakh active cases of COVID-19 and 7,745 deaths had occurred. Similarly, in Tamil Nadu, over 36,000 had tested positive and 326 had died.

Considering the seriousness of the pandemic, the Centre had imposed a nationwide lockdown in March this year and extended it periodically. When the lockdown was announced, there were just 26 cases of COVID-19 in Tamil Nadu, the petitioner said citing a news report and went on to state that panic buying in the “mismanaged” Koyambedu market led to an explosion.

Referring to another news report which projected a high increase in the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the State in the months to come, the petitioner said, the intensity of the disease was very high in Chennai city and therefore an imminent necessity had arisen to enforce a strict lockdown in the city to save the health and lives of the residents.