New Delhi: The parliament session that started this week is likely to be interrupted after 30 MPs were found infected with the coronavirus, two senior parliament officials said, as the number of cases in the country rose to 5.3 million.
The Indian parliament met for the first time in six months on September 14 and was supposed to run until October 1, but the two officials said its duration could be shortened by a week.
“Since the beginning of the session, the number of positive cases has increased, so the government is thinking of interrupting the session,” said one of the two officials, who participates in the operation of parliament procedures.
The government has also ordered daily tests for journalists entering parliament to cover Saturday’s session.
Piyush Soperna, deputy director of the country’s upper house secretariat, said in an email response that he has no information on the issue of prematurely ending the session of parliament next week.
India, which recorded 93,337 new infections in the past 24 hours, has recorded the highest number of cases in a single day in the world since early August, according to a Reuters tally.
India is the second most affected country after the United States with a total of 5.3 million registered coronavirus cases.
However, deaths in India have been relatively low.
The virus has killed 1,247 people in the past 24 hours, bringing the total death toll to 85,619, government data showed Saturday.
The infected lawmakers include Nitin Gadkari, the minister for roads and small and medium-sized enterprises in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet.
On Wednesday, India’s federal government ordered its states not to stockpile oxygen supplies and allow free movement to deal with the growing number of cases.
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