Lucknow, April 14 (IANS) Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Mohanlalganj, Kaushal Kishore, has asked the state election commission (SEC) to defer the Panchayat elections by a month, in view of the pandemic.

The first phase of polling for the Panchayat election is due on Thursday.

Kaushal Kishore tweeted that instead of conducting elections, saving lives of people should be of prime concern. He said that thousands are in the grip of disease.

"The crematoriums are flooded with dead bodies," he said in a tweet while tagging Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.

This comes a day after state minister Brijesh Pathak wrote a letter to senior health officials, underlining the poor state of health system in the state capital amid a surge in Covid cases.

--IANS amita/dpb