COVID: Karnataka Districts Asked to Identify Lands for Cremations

Minister R Ashoka in a letter asked deputy commissioners to identify land where COVID-19 victims could be cremated.

BJP leader R Ashoka.

(Photo Courtesy: The News Minute)

Karnataka Revenue Minister R Ashoka on Tuesday, 20 April, asked district administrations in the state to identify government land to perform the cremation of COVID-19 victims.

These temporary facilities will be established near cities including in Bengaluru, the minister said.

The decision comes after crematoriums in Bengaluru reported long queues and a drastic increase in the number of cremations.

Minister R Ashoka wrote a letter to all the deputy commissioners of Karnataka in which he said that the number of COVID-19 cases in several cities is increasing and so also are the number of deaths. “In this situation, it has come to my notice that there is no place available to perform the final rites and cremation,” he said.

“Immediately, all Deputy Commissioners must make arrangements to temporarily provide land for cremating bodies of COVID-19 victims, which has to be 1-2 KM outside the limits of Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and other municipalities in the state,” read the letter.

Bengaluru recorded 92 deaths among COVID-19 patients on Tuesday and 97 deaths on Monday, the highest in a single day in the second wave of the pandemic.  Parashuram, who manages a crematorium in MS Palya in the city, said that he has overseen 29 and 35 cremations on Monday and Tuesday and most of them were COVID-19 patients.

Karnataka recorded 21,794 COVID-19 cases on Tuesday with 13,782 cases recorded in Bengaluru alone. This is the first time since the onset of the pandemic that the number of cases in a single day in Karnataka has crossed 20,000.

(Published in an arrangement with The News Minute.)