While Assembly and Panchayat elections are going on in West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, two Municipal Corporations and five Municipalities of Telangana are to go for election on April 30.
The demand for the postponement of polls for these urban bodies was rejected by the Election Commission. But it gave strict guidelines for campaigning and polling.
Candidates and political parties especially the Bharatiya Janata Party, the ruling Telangana Rashtriya Samiti of K. Chandrashekhar Rao and even Congress, which is a much weaker party there, are throwing all COVID-19 protocols to the wind to woo voters for the election.
According to reports, the leaders and candidates are not wearing masks, neither using sanitizers nor maintaining social distancing during the campaign.
In the last 24 hours, Telangana reported 10,122 cases of corona virus while 52 people lost their lives.
Similarly, India once again witnessed a big jump in corona virus cases after a fall by 30,000 a day earlier. In the last 24 hours, it reported 3.61 lakh fresh cases and record number of 3,293 deaths.
The last phase of Assembly election is scheduled in West Bengal on April 29 and the fourth and final phase of rural local bodies poll is due in Uttar Pradesh.
Polling for the 150-ward Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation was held on December 1, 2020 in which political parties campaigned openly. But during the winter the number of corona cases was not so high.
Meanwhile, Kesar Singh Gangwar, the BJP MLA from Nawabganj Assembly constituency in Bareilly district of Uttar Pradesh, died of corona in a Noida hospital on April 28. He is the third MLA of the party to succumb to the pandemic in the second wave.
