Though wearing of masks is mandatory for everyone to control the spread of Covid-19, not everyone is following it. Especially, some politicians and top officials are seen without face masks.
Taking a serious note of this, the Gujarat High Court on Monday asked the State government to ensure that everyone, including politicians, follows the rule of wearing masks in public places to shield themselves from contracting Covid-19 and curbing its spread. The HC made the observation while referring to a video of a large congregation where a political leader is seen addressing people who are without masks.
Chief Justice Vikram Nath mentioned the video before Government Pleader Manisha Lavkumar Shah. The Chief Justice said he has noticed that in some rallies with large congregations, people were not wearing masks, and asked the government what it was doing to deal with such occurrences, Shah said. “I said that off-hand, we don’t know what video the court is talking about, but a mask is something that the state is stringently following, and we have been imposing heavy penalties (on those flouting the rule),” she said. It was a casual remark wherein the Chief Justice asked to make sure that the rule is imposed uniformly, the Government Pleader added.
In a recent order in a suo motu case on handling of Covid-19 by the State administration, the division bench of Chief Justice Nath and Justice J B Pardiwala had observed that “…the norms and protocols, as prescribed by the government, time to time, needs to be scrupulously followed, and this applies even to political leaders of the State.”
The bench had added: “The political leaders of the State are expected to lead their masses and not by themselves flout the norms or the rules and regulations prescribed to combat the pandemic.”
“The flouting of the norms at the end of the political leaders would set a bad example for the people at large, and the same may prompt the people to defy the norms,” it said further. Leaders should set right examples.