In what was widely viewed as a classic vignette of life in the time of COVID-19, the Council of Ministers in Kerala convened for a special session of the Cabinet via videoconference, arguably for the first time in the history of the State.
Officials said the worrying pandemic situation in Kerala had forced several Ministers to remain in their home districts to manage the outbreak.
Hence, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had abandoned a conventional face-to-face Cabinet meeting for a secure web conference. A few Ministers in the capital, including Revenue Minister E. Chandrasekharan and Health Minister K.K. Shylaja, participated in the meeting in person.
The meeting reportedly factored in a demand by the chamber of commerce and traders association to relax the restrictions on retail trade, hotel and restaurant business, production and construction outside critical containment zones.
An official said the Cabinet was reportedly of the view that total lockdowns had served its purpose. The contagion had reached the stage that isolating hotspots from the rest of the State would help retard the momentum of the outbreak better.
‘Triple lockdowns helped’
Ministers were also of the opinion that triple lockdowns in coastal localities in Thiruvananthapuram had helped prevent the novel coronavirus from radiating out of the densely populated zones. Moreover, the capital had witnessed a marginal decline in the number of new infections.
The government also considered allowing fishers to return to sea to earn their livelihood by allowing boats with odd and even registration numbers to operate on alternate days. It also weighed various measures to reach the fish to consumers without causing crowding at fish landing centres and markets.
Reprieve likely
Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation, which is under lockdown for nearly two weeks, appeared poised to get some reprieve in localities outside of its critical containment zones.
The government might allow hotels and restaurants to sell food as takeaways. The Cabinet also purportedly revolved around to the view espoused by leaders cutting across the party lines that the time of total State-wide lockdowns had passed.
At an all-party meeting chaired by Mr .Vijayan on Friday, political leaders had urged the government to allow people to return to work. They batted for resuming public transport minimally, shortening curfew hours and facilitating retail trade in a physically distanced manner.
However, the government has kept the option of a State-wide lockdown open in the event the outbreak threatened to spiral out of control and overwhelm the State’s finite health resources.
The Cabinet also considered seeking the sanction of the Kerala Governor to promulgate an ordinance as a temporary substitute for the Finance Bill for 2020-21.
The threat of the transmission of the pandemic had compelled the government to defer the convening of the Assembly on July 27 to pass the Bill. The Cabinet also considered extending the deadline for traders to pay their taxes.
Mr. Vijayan is expected to brief the media about decisions of the Cabinet later in the day.