Aniket Kumar lost both his parents – who worked as principals in government-run schools – to COVID-19 within 10 days.
In early April, his father Lallan Ram, 59, and mother Meena Kumari, 55, attended a camp held in Uttar Pradesh’s Siddharthnagar district to train government staff for the panchayat (village council) elections in the state.
The large northern state, roughly the size of the United Kingdom, is India’s most populous with nearly 220 million residents.
Despite a ferocious second wave of the coronavirus engulfing the country, the mammoth village council elections were held in four phases in April in which nearly 1.3 million candidates aspired for 800,000 posts.
On May 12, the state’s Allahabad High Court also said the state government must grant the amount as ex-gratia compensation to the polling officers who died due to COVID-19 during and after the elections.
“It is not a case that somebody volunteered to render his or her services during election but it was all made obligatory to those assigned with election duty to perform their duties during election even while they showed their reluctance,” the court said, according to a report by Live Law website.
However, the Uttar Pradesh government has rejected claims that more than 1,600 people died, saying there were only three COVID-19 fatalities among the teachers deputed as polling officers.
The teachers’ association accused the government of being “insensitive, irresponsible and far from reality”.
Ameeque Jamai, spokesman for the opposition Samajwadi Party, told Al Jazeera that hundreds of teachers had to lose their lives “due to the mismanagement and negligence of the BJP”.
“The BJP is lying and playing with the sentiments of the bereaved families,” he said, endorsing the union’s demand for compensation.
Despite repeated attempts by Al Jazeera, a BJP spokesman could not be reached for comment. (Aljazeera)