Union Home Secretary A.K. Bhalla will undergo testing for COVID-19 after Home Minister Amit Shah tested positive on Sunday.
Sources in the Union home ministry said Bhalla and the private staff of the home minister, including his personal secretary, personal assistant and officer on special duty will undergo COVID testing. They added that BJP national vice president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe might also undergo testing as he is learnt to have met Shah recently.
Bhalla has been taking files to Shah at his residence on a regular basis and also attending meetings where the home minister was present. Bhalla and senior bureaucrats have been working from North Block while Shah was largely working from home and attended meetings in North Block when they were scheduled.
Sources said the two ministers of state—Nityanand Rai and Kishan Reddy—did not come in contact with Shah in the last few days though they have been working from North Block for several hours.
To fight the COVID threat, North Block has meanwhile decided to undertake a complete sanitisation drive, where every room will be sanitized twice a day as per the protocols that have been framed to keep the virus at bay.
“We are following all the protocols and do not feel the need to shut the office at North Block,” said an official. However, it remains to be seen whether the enclosure where the home minister and his personal staff sit will remain a no-go zone post the sanitisation exercise.
Shah has been pro-active in handling the COVID situation in Delhi. Apart from visiting COVID care facilities—the latest being the largest COVID care centre established under the charge of ITBP— Shah has been spending nearly 12 hours daily to focus on the Delhi COVID situation, which was also being seen as the BJP's strategy to outwit the Arvind Kejriwal government.
Besides this, the inter-state coordination on COVID was being done by the home ministry which has set up at least three war rooms to ensure lockdown and unlock guidelines are followed and flow of communication from the central government is smooth.
