Amit Shah hospitalised with swine influenza, doctors keeping close eye: BJP chief second top leader to have fallen ill months before election

BJP president Amit Shah is being treated for swine influenza in Delhi’s AIIMS. The BJP chief on Wednesday said that he was being treated for swine flu. Shah is the second leader from the BJP who has taken ill ahead of the crucial parliamentary elections and the interim budget session (1 February), which is only a fortnight away. In the capacity of BJP president, Shah is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most trusted advisor and has been charged with crafting the ruling party’s poll strategy to bring Modi back to power in the upcoming Lok Sabha election. On Twitter, Shah said that he expected to recover soon. “I have been diagnosed with swine flu for which the treatment is underway. With God’s grace and good wishes from all of you, I will recover soon,” he said on Twitter in Hindi. मुझे स्वाइन फ्लू हुआ है, जिसका उपचार चल रहा है। ईश्वर की कृपा, आप सभी के प्रेम और शुभकामनाओं से शीघ्र ही स्वस्थ हो जाऊंगा।

मुझे स्वाइन फ्लू हुआ है, जिसका उपचार चल रहा है। ईश्वर की कृपा, आप सभी के प्रेम और शुभकामनाओं से शीघ्र ही स्वस्थ हो जाऊंगा।

— Amit Shah (@AmitShah) January 16, 2019

“A team of doctors are monitoring his condition under the supervision of AIIMS director Randeep Guleria,” sources at AIIMS told PTI. Shah is the second BJP leader to have been admitted to hospital this week. Earlier on Monday, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad was admitted to the pulmonary medicine department. Prasad was kept under observation in the ICU for sinus at the government hospital, PTI had said. According to the latest reports, Prasad’s condition is stable. After facing defeats in state Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan, Modi is facing a tough election and an opposition that is trying to exploit discontent about lack of jobs and low farm prices that have angered farmers. However, Shah and Prasad are not the only two senior BJP leaders battling illnesses. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is in the United States for a medical checkup, officials said earlier in the week. No details were provided but two people with knowledge of the matter said Jaitley was not expected back until at least 25 January.

 Jaitley is due to present the interim budget for 2019/2020 on 1 February.

In November, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had announced that she will not be contesting the 2019 polls due to health issues. “It is the party which decides, but I have made up my mind not to contest the next (Lok Sabha) elections due to health reasons,” Swaraj had said in November last year. She had also said that due to health reasons, she cannot participate in outdoor public programmes, which leaves her out of campaigns as well. Besides Swaraj, Goa chief minister and former defence minister Manohar Parrikar, who has been diagnosed with cancer, may also not be available to campaign for the party due to his poor health. With inputs from agencies