Bihar Chief Secretary Arun Kumar Singh succumbs to COVID-19

Bihar chief secretary Arun Kumar Singh on Friday died of COVID-19. The senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer was undergoing treatment for the disease at a hospital in state capital Patna. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who received the news during a cabinet meeting, condoled his death, an official statement said. 

He said the officer was an efficient administrator and his death was an irreparable loss to the administrative service. Mr Kumar has announced that the officer will be cremated with full state honours. Mr Singh, a 1985-batch officer, had been appointed the chief secretary of Bihar in February this year, days after the Janata Dal United formed a government in alliance with the BJP in Bihar. 

He had replaced senior IAS officer Deepak Kumar. Following this, the cabinet observed one minute silence to pay respect to the chief secretary, according to an official statement. The state currently has 1,00,822 active cases of coronavirus and 2,480 people have died due to the disease so far, according to the state health bulletin. Meanwhile, India on Friday recorded 386,452 fresh cases of Covid-19 and 3498 new deaths, according to the Union health ministry dashboard. With this, the total infection tally reached 1,87,62,976 and the death toll was pushed to 2,08,330.