Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting the latter to allow seamlessly movement of goods across the country without any differentiation during the period of lockdown.
Welcoming the Prime Minister’s announcement of a nationwide lockdown for a period of 21 days with effect from today, the CM said that his State has been taking all out efforts to ensure that the lockdown is enforced effectively.
In his letter, the Odisha CM wanted to draw attention of the PM to one issue of nationwide ramification, i.e. movement of goods across States through inter-state borders.
The biggest challenge for the country will be to ensure availability of goods across the country especially in view of the lockdown, Naveen said.
“As of now it has been announced that all transport services except transportation of essential goods will remain suspended. I am of the view that differentiation of goods as essential and non-essential will lead to discretion, corruption and dislocation at check gate level. It may lead to chaos and affect the movement of essential goods as well”, he said.
The CM said, “In fact I understand there are long queues extending to couple of kilometres in the inter-state borders. I am sharing this from our experience in handling natural disasters-whenever we have made a differentiation between essential and non-essential goods, the overall goods movement, especially of essential goods get affected”.
At the same time it is difficult to prepare a comprehensive list of essential and non-essential goods and get it enforced practically at the field level, the Odisha CM added.
“Hence, I suggest that movement of goods may be permitted seamlessly across the country without any differentiation, in order to avoid clogging at the check gates that may adversely impact supply of essential goods”, Naveen further stated.
He also urged the PM to take a decision in this matter on an urgent basis.