Former Karnataka minister Dinesh Gundu Rao tests positive for coronavirus

Gundu Rao had attended Saturday's final day of the monsoon session in Karnataka which went on till midnight.
Dinesh Gundu Rao
Dinesh Gundu Rao
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Former Karnataka minister Dinesh Gundo Rao tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Sunday. In a tweet, Dinesh Gundu Rao on Sunday said, “I have tested #Corona positive today. Therefore I will be quarantining myself for 10 days. I request all my primary contacts to get themselves checked and take necessary precaution.”

As the former Congress state president was attending Saturday's final day of the monsoon session in Karnataka which went on till midnight, all MLAs in the state including the Chief Minister and other cabinet ministers will have to be  tested, sources said.

Gundu Rao, after being appointed as the Tamil Nadu in-charge of the Congress, had met DMK chief MK Stalin at the DMK headquarters in Chennai on September 25. 

This comes after Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister Govind M Karjol on Tuesday said he has tested positive for coronavirus after he attended the session. Prior to Karjol, CM Yediyurappa and a host of ministers, including another Deputy Chief Minister Dr CN Ashwath Narayan, Home Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Forest Minister Anand Singh, Tourism Minister CT Ravi and Agriculture Minister BC Patil, had tested positive for coronavirus and later recovered. 

Incidentally the monsoon session which was initially supposed to be for eight days was curtailed to six days in fear of rising infections among legislators and the Assembly session was shortened even though 32 bills were to be tabled. 

So far more than 100 members of the Vidhana Soudha secretariat staff as well as ministers have tested positive for coronavirus.

As ordered by Speaker Visheshwar Kageri, all legislators had to get a negative result for a COVID-19 test conducted 72 hours prior to the start of the session to attend the session.

Meanwhile, the spurt of fresh COVID-19 cases continues in Bengaluru as in the rest of the country. Karnataka on Saturday reported 8,811 new COVID-19 cases and 86 related fatalities, taking the total number of infections to 5,66,023 in the state and the death toll to 8,503. Out of Saturday’s cases, 4,083 cases were from Bengaluru Urban alone.

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