Mumbai: On Tuesday, three of Maharashtra’s cabinet ministers had a meeting with representatives of cane cutters at Pune’s Vasantdada Sugar Institute. Other leaders such as Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and Bharatiya Janata Party’s Pankaja Munde were also present.
The meeting took place inside a large conference hall, with all those present seated appropriately following social distancing norms.
Following the meeting, however, everyone squeezed in for a picture — at least 34 people standing right next to each other, some — like Pawar — with their masks dangling under the nose and a couple of them even without them.
It is this dichotomy that has perhaps led to so many of Maharashtra ministers getting infected by Covid. So far, 18 cabinet ministers and junior ministers — nearly 42 per cent of the 43-strong council of ministers (33 cabinet and ten ministers of state) — have tested positive for Covid, the latest being Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar.
Of the 18 ministers from the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government to test positive, 13 are cabinet ministers, and five are ministers of state. Most of them, seven to be precise, are from the NCP — they include Jitendra Awhad, Dhananjay Munde and Hasan Mushrif. While six are from the Congress, including Ashok Chavan, Varsha Gaikwad and Aslam Shaikh, four belong to the Shiv Sena, including Anil Parab and Eknath Shinde. Omprakash Bachu Kadu of Prahar Janshakti Party, an MVA ally, also tested positive in September.
Two days before Ajit Pawar said he has contracted the infection, Leader of the Opposition and former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis shared a tweet announcing that he was isolating himself after testing positive for Covid.
While politicians are more susceptible to the virus due to the very nature of their jobs, the number of ministers infected in Maharashtra is one of the highest in the country. Among other states with a large Covid caseload, Uttar Pradesh has 16 ministers who have tested Covid positive out of a council of 54, while Karnataka has nine Covid-positive ministers among the total 23.
Maharashtra has reported a total of 16,54,028 Covid-positive cases, of which at least 1,31,554 are currently active, according to latest data with the state government.
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‘All ministers don’t always follow protocol’
While ministers automatically make themselves more vulnerable to Covid when they are out in the field and travel among people, within offices too, many don’t necessarily follow the protocols of social distancing and wearing masks at all times, multiple sources in the state government said.
An official who attends the weekly cabinet meetings on a regular basis told ThePrint that these meetings, held in a long conference call on the seventh floor of the state headquarters of Mantralaya, are especially “a hotbed for catching the infection”.
“The room gets too crowded,” he said. “There are 33 cabinet ministers, plus government officials. These meetings go on for 2-3 hours, and social distancing is not possible because the room is just not big enough for it.”
The official added: “For some reason, ministers also remove their masks while speaking, which defeats the purpose of wearing one.”
Most ministers have been physically attending the state cabinet meetings for the past few months, while CM Uddhav Thackeray joins in though video conference.
In the case of some ministers, another official said, it appears to be business as usual in their cabins and waiting rooms, like in pre-Covid times. “The rooms are packed… some people have to be reminded to wear masks, after which they fish it out of their pockets,” he said.
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‘Can’t speak clearly through masks, glasses fog up’
Officials who are part of the teams of ministers, some of whom have caught the infection and recovered from it, told ThePrint it is nearly impossible for mass leaders to take the precautionary measures that the state government advises as there are several practical difficulties.
“Only the 2-3 key bureaucrats required for the meeting are sitting in office with the minister, while all the others are asked to join on webinars,” said an official who works with Shiv Sena leader Subhash Desai, adding that the industries minister is in Mantralaya four days a week, but all meetings are now held via video conferencing.
Meetings with Desai are possible now only with a prior appointment. There are no walk-in visitors, unless the matter is very urgent. Desai is among the Maharashtra ministers who have not tested Covid positive.
“Social distancing is strictly followed and needless to say, we all wear masks,” the official added. “But, sometimes while speaking in meetings, voice and pronunciation are not clear through masks. In cabinet meetings too, there’s a concern of not being clear enough, or being misunderstood, so sometimes people lower their masks and speak.”
A member of NCP minister Dhananjay Munde’s team said the ballgame is completely different for a minister from a rural constituency.
“Appointments and all are fine for people from Mumbai. Back home, if we tell people to first take an appointment and only then meet the minister, there will be a lot of anger,” he said. “People are insecure, they have lost their jobs. In such a situation, politicians can’t turn them away or they will be judged for not helping their voters.”
Munde, and several members of his staff, had tested positive in June.
“Masks too have become just a formality. There are practical difficulties,” the official added. “Sometimes, it gets too suffocating and for people who wear spectacles, speaking through masks fogs up the glasses. If we remove the spectacles, we can’t read clearly from the file in front of us.”
In Mantralaya too, though walk-in visitor passes have been discontinued with, there is a constant trickle of people into the offices of certain ministers, especially those from rural constituencies. “In the first few months of the pandemic, we would insist on the use of sanitisers and temperature checks for all visitors entering the minister’s office. Now, as Covid has become commonplace, and our visitors have increased, all of that has gone for a toss,” said a personal assistant of a cabinet minister who had tested Covid positive.
“But then, Ajit Pawar saheb took every precaution possible, and in the end he too caught Covid,” he said.
Ajit Pawar’s Covid protocol
For some, NCP’s Ajit Pawar was the role model when it came to taking precautionary measures against Covid, while many also thought he was the most paranoid minister.
Hand sanitisers and temperature checks are just the beginning of the preventive measures that Pawar’s office takes. Every file or paper coming in or going out goes through a UV sanitiser machine in Pawar’s office. The deputy CM has also been seen spraying sanitiser on boom microphones of journalists before giving bytes.
He is one of the few ministers who takes the extra precaution of wearing gloves and has an area around him cordoned off in his party office as well as at his Mantralaya cabin. But a few days before he tested positive for Covid, Pawar, currently recuperating at Mumbai’s Breach Candy Hospital, had extensively travelled across flood-hit areas in Maharashtra.
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