Night curfew in Delhi: Nearly 87K of over 1.19 lakh applications for e-passes rejected

New Delhi, Apr 8: District authorities in Delhi have received over 1.19 lakh applications for e-passes that allow people to travel during night curfew hours and nearly 87,000 of them have been rejected, officials said on Thursday.

Most applications were rejected either because the applicants did not fall in exempted categories or due to wrong entries made by them, they said.

The number of pending applications has come down to 20,055 from over 30,000 on Wednesday, official data showed.

A total of 1,19,369 applications were received and only 12,068 were approved. As many as 86,909 applications were rejected, the data showed.

The Delhi government on Tuesday imposed seven hours of night curfew, from 10 PM to 5 AM, with immediate effect for this entire month as an emergency measure for the "wellbeing and safety" of people in view of rising COVID-19 cases in the city.

People require a soft or hard copy of an e-pass to travel during curfew hours. The e-pass can be obtained from the Delhi government website -- www.delhi.gov.in.

The highest number of applications were received in New Delhi district at 20,267, followed by 19,646 in South West and 13,025 in West.

New Delhi and South districts saw over 16,000 applications being rejected, the highest across districts. As many as 9,812 applications were rejected in South West district and 9,706 in West Delhi.

At 7,206, South West district had the highest number of pending applications, followed by 4,684 in North West and 3,247 in New Delhi, the data showed.

Several categories of people, including those going for COVID-19 vaccination, persons associated with essential services, pregnant women, central and Delhi government officials involved in emergency services, etc. are exempted from the night curfew.