Pune: In a move to ease some relaxations on the current lockdown, West Bengal allowed the flights to operate to cities including Mumbai and Pune. The government has decided that domestic flights will operate to COVID-19 hotspots such as Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Nagpur, Chennai and Ahmedabad.

The flights will operate to six cities however, no flights will be operational to and from Kolkata on September 7, 11, and 12 when West Bengal will be under total lockdown.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that starting from next month, the government allowed the flights to operate from these six states but with a rider. Domestic flights from six hotspots will be permitted thrice a week.

Referring to the result, the Chief Minister specified that they have acknowledged many requests to resume flight operations from six COVID hotspot states, reason why flight services from these six cities will be resuming thrice a week from next month.

Apart from this, Mamata Banerjee also allowed metro railway services to recommence, with precautionary and social distancing norms to be in place. The coastal state witnessed nearly 1.45 lakh COVID-19 cases. There were over 27,000 active cases in the state with death total from COVID-19 infection gone up to 2,909.