NEW DELHI: Indian government leaders appealed to farmers to call off a mass protest this week for fear it could prove a viral "super-spreader" event as the country's overall death toll from Covid-19 crossed 300,000 on Monday.
Over a third have died over the past three weeks during a devastating second wave fuelled by a new virus variant detected in India, mass political and religious gatherings, and lowering of the guard by the public, health officials and experts say.
Now farmers have stirred fresh alarm by saying they will hold mass protests across the country on Wednesday to mark six months of their campaign against deregulation of agriculture markets.
Farmers are camped out on Delhi's outskirts despite a great risk of infection to themselves, the joint committee of farmers organisations said in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to repeal laws to liberalise the farm sector.
"We have no desire to expose the protesting farmers or anyone else to avoidable health hazards," the letter said.
But challenging laws that would make farmer livelihoods vulnerable to corporate agri-businesses is itself a life and death matter, it said.
Twelve opposition parties including Congress issued a statement saying they stood by the farmers, who are an influential voting bloc in India's vast countryside.
The fear is that a mass rally on the edges of the capital Delhi could become a "super-spreader" incident like the Great Pitcher festival on the banks of the river Ganges last month when thousands took a holy dip, or the crowded political rallies that were held in states holding local elections.
"Please don't act irresponsibly, this kind of protest is totally unacceptable when the lives of people are at stake," Amarinder Singh, chief minister of Punjab state where the farmer demonstrations originated, said in a statement.
India's daily tally of new coronavirus infections rose by 222,315, government data showed on Monday although it has fallen off highs of over 400,000 earlier this month.
The giant South Asian country has recorded a total of 26.75 million Covid-19 infections, second only to the United States. Deaths rose by 4,454 to reach a total of 303,720.
Health experts say the actual number of fatalities could be several times higher as many are not being reported as Covid-19 deaths. Scores of bodies have washed up in the Ganges or have been found in shallow graves by the riverbank.
EVACUATION: Meanwhile, Indian authorities on Monday ordered the evacuation of nearly half a million people out of the path of a new cyclone heading towards eastern India just one week after another deadly storm smashed into the west coast.
The cyclones are hitting as India reels from a surge in coronavirus infections that has plunged the healthcare system into crisis and pushed the country's Covid-19 death toll above 300,000.
Experts say storms off India's coast are increasing in frequency and intensity as climate change warms ocean waters.
The India Meteorological Department said Cyclone Yaas had formed in the Bay of Bengal and was expected to barrel into West Bengal and Odisha states on Wednesday. Neighbouring Bangladesh has also been put on alert.
Yaas could pack gusts of up to 185 kilometres per hour as a "Very Severe Cyclonic Storm" at the time of landfall, the department said.
Storm surges of up to four metres high were "likely to inundate low-lying coastal areas", it added.
Evacuations in coastal districts and the Sunderbans mangrove forest, a Unesco world heritage site, started on Sunday, West Bengal disaster management minister Javed Ahmed Khan said. - Reuters/AFP
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
