East Singhbhum district has deputed 25 executive magistrates across the district as “incident commanders” from Thursday to enforce the lockdown for the novel coronavirus pandemic in a stricter way.

The deputation order was sent out on Wednesday by East Singhbhum deputy commissioner (DC) Ravi Shankar Shukla.

“The incident commanders will implement containment measures in their respective local jurisdiction and will be responsible for the overall implementation of the containment measures in their respective jurisdiction, including issuance of temporary vehicle passes for essential movements during the lockdown,” said N. K. Lal, East Singhbhum additional district magistrate (law and order),.

According to the order issued by DC Shukla, all other local officials in the specified area will work under the direction of such incident commanders to enforce the lockdown norms, including maintaining social distancing.

So far during the lockdown, people had to apply for essential movement passes from the office of the Dhalbhum sub-divisional officer and for vehicle permission from the office of the district transport officer.

All enforcing authorities have now been directed to note that these strict restrictions fundamentally relate to the movement of people, but not to that of essential goods such as food grains, fuel and medicines.

“The incident commanders will also keep tab on the working of the surveillance team and also of the door-to-door survey work in identifying those persons who had come from outside the state, other districts of Jharkhand or from abroad,” said ADM Lal.

“They (the incident commanders) will be directing the surveillance team and the booth-level officers, civic bodies team and anganwadi sevikas who are busy conducting door-to-door survey so that not a single suspected Covid-19 case misses detection. They will also be ensuring that people under home quarantine or in institution quarantine are strictly abiding by the protocols in coordination with district health officials,” added Lal.

The incident commanders will also collect information from medicine shops about persons taking pills or syrups for flu-like symptoms so that they can be put under home quarantine too.

The directive assumes significance in the wake of apprehension of violation of lockdown provisions due to the relaxation during the lockdown-2 with a tendency of people to move out from their homes even for non-essential things.

Meanwhile, the East Singhbhum administration has also started holding meeting with religious clerics and Muslim community leaders to ensure that people do not come out from their homes during the holy month of Ramzan and instead perform the prayers at their homes.