LUCKNOW, India/NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend a foundation-laying ceremony for a Hindu temple on Wednesday, organisers said, even though his interior minister has contracted COVID-19.
Amit Shah, Modi’s highest lieutenant and Indian interior minister, entered a personal hospital near Delhi on Sunday, 4 days after attending a cabinet cabinet assembly attended by the prime minister.
But arrangements continue for Modi to a temple built in honor of the Hindu god king Ram in the northern city of Ayodhya, said the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, which is being built on the site of a mosque that has been razed. About 3 decades ago.
Modi did not respond to an email asking for comment, however, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, another organization interested in building the temple on a long-contested site with Muslims, said Modi would make the visit.
Sources close to the stage said an official announcement of the scale scheduled for Tuesday.
The resources eliminated the undue fear that others would be in poor health after the Shah, saying social estrangement regulations had been followed at last week’s closet assembly at Modi’s residence.
It was not without transparent delay if Modi and the others supplied had been tested for COVID-19.
Knowledge of the Indian government showed on Monday that 52,972 new coronavirus patients had been recorded in the last 24 hours, bringing India’s total to 1.8 million, the third in the world after the United States and Brazil.
With 771 new deaths, COVID-19 has now killed 38,135 others in India, adding a minister on Sunday in Uttar Pradesh state. World Health Organization emergency chief Mike Ryan praised India’s testing efforts, but expressed fear of a maximum positive rate, estimated at 12.5%.
“This is that the disease continues to circulate intensely,” he said at a briefing in Geneva.
Shah’s admission to a personal hospital has generated social media complaints in a country where public fitness infrastructure is running low after years of low investment. An aides said Shah was paying for his remedy and sought to lessen pressure on government hospitals.
(Additional reporting by Anuron Kumar Mitra, Sachin Ravikumar, Nigamananda Prusty and Emma Farge in Geneva; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, Gerry Doyle, Timothy Heritage and Nick Macfie)
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