New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has been diagnosed with Covid-19, the latest high-profile politician to contract the infection.
Chouhan made the announcement through a tweet Saturday and nominated Home Minister Narottam Misra and three other cabinet colleagues to chair Covid-19 review meetings in his absence.
मेरे प्रिय प्रदेशवासियों, मुझे #COVID19 के लक्षण आ रहे थे, टेस्ट के बाद मेरी रिपोर्ट पॉज़िटिव आई है। मेरी सभी साथियों से अपील है कि जो भी मेरे संपर्क में आए हैं, वह अपना कोरोना टेस्ट करवा लें। मेरे निकट संपर्क वाले लोग क्वारन्टीन में चले जाएँ।
— Shivraj Singh Chouhan (@ChouhanShivraj) July 25, 2020
Only two days ago, Chouhan’s cabinet colleague Arvind Singh Bhadoria had tested positive for Covid-19. Bhadoria, who is in charge of the cooperative department, had travelled with CM Chouhan in a special flight to Lucknow earlier this week to pay last respects to Madhya Pradesh governor Lalji Tandon, who died there on 21 July.
Across states, the number of politicians, including ministers, testing positive for the novel coronavirus is growing. In July alone, close to a dozen ministers in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka and Bihar have tested positive.
In Maharashtra, five ministers in the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government have tested positive for Covid-19 so far. The latest was on 22 July, the Shiv Sena’s Abdul Sattar. Two days before that, the Congress’ Aslam Sheikh, who holds the textiles, port and fisheries portfolio, had been diagnosed with Covid-19.
Ministers Dhananjay Munde and Jitendra Awhad of the NCP and Ashok Chavan of the Congress have now recovered.
In Tamil Nadu, Labour Minister Nilofer Kafeel tested positive on 17 July, the fourth minister in the E.K. Palaniswami government to be diagnosed with Covid-19. Karnataka Tourism Minister C.T. Ravi tested positive on 14 July. A day earlier, Shailesh Kumar, a minister in the Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government, tested positive.
In Bihar, the BJP office in Patna had to be sealed earlier this month after close to 25 positive cases were detected there. Many senior office-bearers of the state unit, where preparations were on for the assembly election scheduled later this year, had tested positive.
In June, Uttarakhand Tourism Minister Satpal Maharaj had tested positive for the virus, forcing Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat to go into quarantine.
Rawat is one of three chief ministers who had to go into quarantine after coming into contact with a Covid-19 patient, the others being Jharkhand’s Hemant Soren and Himachal Pradesh’s Jai Ram Thakur. All three CMs, however, tested negative.
Also Read: Young people exposed to Covid-19 can lose trust in politicians for decades: Study
Politicians need extra precautions
ThePrint had reported last month that, across the political spectrum, over two dozen politicians, including legislators and corporators, have contracted the virus. There have been fatalities too — Tamil Nadu MLA J. Anbazhagan of the DMK succumbed to Covid-19 on 10 June, and, in Maharashtra, the BJP’s two-time former MP and two-time former MLA Haribhau Jawale died last week.
Many politicians ThePrint spoke to last month said the very nature of their job, which entails interacting with the public, makes them slightly more vulnerable compared to others.
Public health experts are of the view that politicians and public figures need to be extra careful because they interact with far more people on a daily basis than a non-politician.
Professor Giridhar R. Babu, head of Lifecourse Epidemiology at the Public Health Foundation of India, had said that precautions to avoid getting Covid-19 are universal, including for public figures.
“But politicians and bureaucrats have to be doubly cautious as they interact with more people. Politicians also tend to ignore mask-wearing etiquette. There is a general feeling among them that wearing a mask is uncomfortable. This attitude is not correct,” Babu had said.
According to Babu, public figures are also at risk because they have to attend meetings in closed-room settings. “That is why it becomes all the more important to adhere to physical distancing protocols both inside closed-door meetings and outside,” he had said.
Also Read: On Covid fight frontline, at least 30 IAS and IPS officers have tested positive since April