Panaji, March 30: The Goa State Human Rights Commission (GSHRC) on Monday issued notice to the state government on a petition filed by a group of social activists objecting to the deployment of two CISF battalions to enforce the lockdown for the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The petition has been filed by Kashinath Shetye, Dr Ketan Govekar, Arthur Dsouza, Desmond Alvares, Inacio Domnic Pereira, Narendra Chodankar and Ramchandra Manjrekar. GSHRC member Justice (Retd) Pramod Kamat issued notice to the state government and CISF through Assistant Solicitor General Pravin Faldesai, returnable on April 1. Goa CM Pramod Sawant Gets Irked by 'People Violating Coronavirus Lockdown to Buy Shampoo'.

"Deployment of CISF in Goa only goes to show we are treating a humanitarian crisis as a law and order problem and intending to use force to handle the crisis, without realizing that it will not work and will in fact cause further human rights violations," the petition reads. Deploying CISF could lead to uncontrollable civil unrest if hungry citizens are subjected to "disciplining", the petition contends.

"People are on the roads on account of lack of clarity and confusion due to constantly changing announcements about supply of essential commodities and services, with no real systematic access to food," it said. The petitioners said to blame this situation on the people on the roads is to absolve the state's responsibility to multilingually disseminate information about COVID-19.