Before Telangana cabinet meet, Owaisi urges not to extend lockdown

The Telangana cabinet is due to meet on Sunday to decide about the lockdown in the state amid COVID-19. Restrictions under lockdown came into force in the state on May 12 and after 10 days, it was extended further till May 30. The lockdown has been implemented with a four-hour daily relaxation. 

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Ahead of the state cabinet meeting, Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi urged K Chandrashekar Rao-led Telangana government to not extend the lockdown. 

The AIMIM leader in a series of tweets showed the data that stated COVID-19 cases were declining in Telangana even before the lockdown was imposed in the state. 

“I must reiterate my opposition. It’s not a strategy to combat COVID-19. It APPEARS as a “hard on pandemic” strategy but all it does is destroy the lives of poor,” Asaduddin Owaisi said in a tweet. 

He added, “Lockdowns give a cruel choice to the poor: poverty, police atrocities, or pandemic. They make a public health crisis into a law and order problem. They are neither a scientific nor a humanitarian strategy.”

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Telangana is reporting 3,000 to 4,000 cases of COVID-19 daily while the active caseload stands at 36,917 as of Sunday. The COVID-19 recovery rate in the state is at 93% as the recovered cases have outnumbered new infections.