The chief secretary of Bihar, Arun Kumar Singh, died of corona virus on Friday (April 30) afternoon. A 1985 batch IAS officer, he took over as the chief secretary on February 28 and was to retire on August 31.
Chief minister Nitish Kumar expressed deep shock over the sad demise of Singh.
He is not the first IAS officer to die during the second wave of corona virus. Only on April 12, another senior IAS officer Vijay Ranjan, director in the Panchayati Raj department died of the same disease. Then on April 22 Ravi Shankar Chowdhury, additional health secretary also died due to corona virus.
Condoling Arun Kumar Singh’s death, Nitish Kumar tweeted that Bihar has lost an able administrator and his death is an irreparable loss to the state. His last rites would be performed with full state honours, the chief minister announced.
Arun Kumar Singh’s death came after the state officially recorded 13,089 cases of corona virus and 89 deaths during the last 24 hours.
Besides, several Bihar Administrative Service officials have also lost their lives in the recent weeks.
It needs to be mentioned that during the first wave last year, several senior bureaucrats as well as BAS officers had either suffered from corona virus or died of it.
Bihar, it needs to be mentioned, is witnessing sharp increase in number of corona virus fatalities. Media reports suggest that the government is grossly under-reporting and the real figure is much higher.
For example, NDTV reported on Thursday that while the Bihar government claims that 85 people had lost their lives in 24 hours in the entire state when the truth is that bodies of at least 120 corona related victims were brought to a crematorium on that very day in Patna alone.
