Long lines of crammed ambulances, some carrying up to three dead patients, have formed before Lucknow’s two crematoriums since Thursday.

Some of the ambulances are having to wait two days or even longer in the queue with the dead and their relatives. It’s not just costing the bereaved families tens of thousands of rupees in ambulance charges but causing an ambulance shortage in the city.

At the root of the crisis, crematorium staff and relatives of the dead say, are two developments:

n One of the two electric chambers at the Baikunth Dham crematorium and the only one at Gullala Ghat —each capable of incinerating a body in one hour — have developed snags and stopped functioning.
n The recent Covid resurgence has increased the arrival of bodies.

Manish Pandey told The Telegraph on Sunday morning he had been waiting in queue at Baikunth Dham since Friday night, sharing an ambulance with his father’s body and that of another dead patient.

He said he would be lucky to be able to cremate his father by Sunday night.

Employees at Baikunth Dham said the malfunctioning of one of the electric chambers since Thursday had brought the crematorium’s capacity to burn bodies from 48 a day to 24 while the number of arrivals had increased to 60 because of the Covid surge. They said Covid accounted for around half the dead.

“My father died of Covid at King George’s Medical University on Friday night. I shared an ambulance with the family of another dead patient from the same hospital as this was the only option,” Pandey, a resident of old Lucknow and a soldier posted in Punjab who is on leave, said on Sunday morning. “I have been waiting my turn since then. My father’s body is in the ambulance.”

Even a static ambulance costs a client at least Rs 10,000 a day.

A crematorium employee said the authorities had from Sunday revived pyre burning, a practice that had virtually stopped over the past few years. “Today, the local authority asked us to bring firewood. We have 10 (concrete) platforms for pyres, so this may help clear the backlog.”

A pyre takes about 10 hours from cremation to the recovery of the remains, and firewood costs about double the incineration charge.

“There’s one more person apart from me to cremate the bodies. We can burn a maximum of 24 bodies in 24 hours even if we work round the clock. But on average, 60 bodies are arriving every day since Thursday,” said Munna Kumar Singh, an employee at Baikunth Dham.

“Covid patient or not, each body comes in a PPE kit. We are issuing tokens to the relatives and asking them to wait their turn.”

Awadhesh Prasad had been queuing at Gullala Ghat with the body of his younger brother, who died after a cardiac arrest, since Saturday morning.

“The only electric chamber here is not working. Only 19 of the 42 platforms for pyres are usable — the rest are damaged or too dirty,” he said.

“Pyre burning takes 10 hours. Some 20 ambulances, most of them carrying multiple bodies, are queuing at the gate.”

Prasad hit out at chief minister Yogi Adityanath.

“Uttar Pradesh mein hahakar macha hai aur mukhya mantriji chunavbaji mein lage hain (Uttar Pradesh is wailing in distress while the chief minister is busy electioneering),” he said.

Adityanath is not only addressing rallies in poll-bound Bengal, he is busy holding meetings with BJP activists for the April 15-29 panchayat elections in Uttar Pradesh.

Amit Kumar, additional municipal commissioner of Lucknow, said: “We are trying our best to improve the situation.”

A state health department report says 12,787 Covid patients were detected between Saturday noon and Sunday noon, of whom 4,059 were from Lucknow. It adds that 48 people died of Covid in the state during this 24-hour period, 23 of them in Lucknow.

The death count should be higher, however, if crematorium staff are right about half the arrivals being dead Covid patients.