Hyderabad: The Telangana government closed the borders with Maharashtra on Sunday.
"It is worrisome that coronavirus cases are rising very rapidly in neighboring Maharashtra. We will watch the situation for a few more days and if the situation warrants, our government will close the borders after discussing with the Maharashtra government," Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhara Rao had said on Saturday.
The chief minister explained that the drastic step was taken to protect Telangana from the spread of possible contagion.
Telangana and Maharashtra share a 500-km interstate boundary and people living in border districts such as Nizamabad and Adilabad have close family ties with those on the other side, necessitating routine travel and family visits across the dividing line. This entails a huge risk of the virus entering Telangana from the north.
The state government is worried that it will have to open a second front to battle coronavirus if the rapid rise in cases in Maharashtra starts having a spillover effect on the border.
According to the government, some 5,000 people, most of them with travel history, had been quarantined in various parts of Hyderabad and over 50,000 people had been screened for symptoms.
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