Three akharas have appealed for the Mahakumbh in Haridwar to be closed immediately because of the surge in Covid cases and said they would be leaving from Saturday, their stand dividing the monks at the congregation and inviting attacks.

The administration said it had no plans to prematurely wind up the Kumbh Mela, scheduled to run till April 30.

Mahant Ravindrapuri of the Niranjani Akhara, one of the country’s 13 main akharas (monasteries), said on Friday morning: “We have decided to withdraw from the Mahakumbh on April 17 and vacate the mela (congregation or fair) area to prevent further spread of the coronavirus.”

The Sri Panchayati Akhara and the Anand Akhara endorsed the stand of Niranjani, which chided the government for failing to take tough decisions despite the Covid surge. The Uttarakhand health department has detected 2,400 Covid infections in the Kumbh area since the congregation started on April 1.

Swaroopanand Saraswati, Shankaracharya of both the Dwarka Sharda Peetham in Gujarat and the Jyotir Math in Badrinath, dismissed Niranjani’s argument, saying: “The mela will continue till April 30.”

His disciple Swami Avimukteshwaranand said: “The Mahakumbh… dates are decided according to planet positions; nobody can change them.”

Visuals from the Kumbh, now teeming with 20 lakh pilgrims and monks from across the country, show crowds milling about on the Ganga’s banks without masks and unmindful of physical distancing amid a second wave of the pandemic nationwide.

Deepak Rawat, the IAS officer in charge of the Mahakumbh, told reporters: “We haven’t discussed truncating the month-long mela.”