The BJP has questioned the move of the Nitish Kumar government to impose night curfews in Bihar saying this will hardly serve any purposes when the Covid cases were surging fast across the state.

The BJP is a coalition partner in the Nitish Kumar government and has more seats in the Bihar Assembly than the JD-U led by Kumar.

“The Bihar government has taken many decisions which were necessary in the current situation. Although I am not an expert yet I fail to understand how the enforcement of night curfews will check spread of coronavirus in the state,” state BJP president and MP Sanjay Jaiswal said in his Facebook post today.

He said if the Covid spread really had to be checked then the government would have to impose 62-hour lockdown in the weekend.

According to him, the weekend lockdown should begin from Friday evening to Monday morning. “This will help break the Covid chain to a certain extent,” he said adding failure of the Bihar government to enforce 62-hour lockdown could leave Bihar among the worst-hit states, such as Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh.

The BJP reacted after the state government imposed a slew of Covid restrictions yesterday with the objective to check spread of the coronavirus.

They include shutting down all educational institutions, movie theatres, shopping malls, parks and gyms till 15 May and ordering for closure of all business establishments and markets by six in the evening. Apart from these, the government also ordered for closure of all government and private offices by five in the evening.

However, no restrictions have been imposed on plying of inter-state buses.

The Covid situation is turning alarming with each passing day as the cases continue to rise, breaking all the previous records. The state reported a total of 8,690 cases in the past 24 hours, of which 2,290 cases were reported from Patna alone.

The current situation is such that beds in the all the Covid hospitals are full to the brim with patients even as the acute shortage of oxygen cylinders has made the situation further critical.

Added to that, medicines used for treating Covid-19 too have gone out of stock. A social activist Satyanarayan Madan alleged one of his friends had to buy six injections of Remdesivir by paying as much as Rs3 (three) lakh instead of Rs24,000. Ambulances too were charging exorbitant prices as high as Rs8,000 for carrying patients from one corner to another in Patna while for outstation patients, they are charging at least Rs15,000.