Issuing an order by an authority and cancelling it or modifying it by another the next day seems to be the order of the day during the Covid-19 lockdown in Manipur.

As part of the measures being taken up for hundreds of incoming air passengers who started landing at the Bir Tikendrajit International Airport from Monday onwards, special secretary (home), Gyan Prakash, issued standard operating procedures (SOP) on Sunday which surprised many people with the permission given to the passengers to go home and self quarantine themselves if they are asymptomatic or be sent to the isolated ward and Covid care facilities at the hospital if they are symptomatic on arrival.

The office memorandum elucidating the SOP for air passengers stated that medical teams would screen all passengers arriving at the airport by full-body thermal screening. Thereafter, the passengers will fill up the forms issued to them and submit those to the medical team. All asymptomatic passengers would be stamped for home quarantine on their hands with indelible ink and allowed to collect their baggage, the order said.

Any symptomatic or suspected passenger would be separated immediately and sent to isolation ward or Covid treatment ward by a medical team as per protocol, it said.

However, as the first IndiGo flight, carrying 96 passengers, was just about to land at the airport on Monday morning, chief secretary, J. Suresh Babu issued another office memorandum, partially modifying the earlier SOP notified by the home department on Sunday.

The chief secretary’s office memorandum stated: “All asymptomatic passengers shall be stamped for institutional quarantine or community quarantine on their hand with indelible ink and allowed baggage collection area.”

“Any symptomatic passenger or suspected passenger will be separated immediately and sent to isolation ward orCovid treatment ward by medical team as per protocol.”

All passengers would remain in quarantine centre for further testing, it added.

Earlier, representatives of six students organisations put pressure on the government to put all air passengers under quarantine in new centres. The student leaders said there is no difference between train passengers and air passengers regarding the Covid-19 spread.

Most of them were returning from red zones and they all needed to be quarantined, they maintained.

Later, the chief secretary’s new office memorandum was issued. Many student volunteers cleaned the compound of the LF School at Kwakeithel for opening an institutional quarantine centre.

The passengers of the first IndiGo flight numbering 96 were taken to the Human Resources Development Academy at Ghari in Imphal West district for quarantine.