BJP slams CMs for taking 'U-turn' on COVID-19 vaccination policy

Union Minister Hardeep Puri shared a few news articles stating Chief Ministers including West Bengal's Mamata Banerjee, Maharashtra's Uddhav Thackeray, Delhi's Arvind Kejriwal and Congress leaders first sought permission from the Centre to allow the states to procure vaccines.

However, all the leaders later took a U-turn and asked the Narendra Modi government to procure vaccines and distribute them among the states.

Puri tweeted, "Then, almost in a planned U-turn, there was a chorus by Sh Kejriwal, Mamata Ji, Uddhav Thackeray Ji, Rahul Gandhi Ji, Sh Anand Sharma & others to allow states to buy vaccines directly. When allowed they realised that they had bitten off more than they could chew."

In a very recent instance, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had written a letter to his counterparts of various states urging them to achieve a consensus on asking the central government to procure vaccines and distribute them among states.

Patnaik's proposal was agreed upon by Banerjee, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and others.

After the Modi government announced on Monday that it will purchase vaccines for all aged 18 or more and distribute it among the states, BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya tweeted to attack Congress MP Rahul Gandhi.

"Rahul Gandhi must be feeling like..." Malviya tweeted.

Slamming the West Bengal Chief Minister, the BJP leader tweeted, "Mamata Banerjee demanded that State governments be given the room to procure and administer vaccines way back in Feb and then reiterated the demand again in Apr. Let alone procure, she couldn’t administer even what the Center sent between Jan-Apr for those above 45 years of age."

Prior to Modi's latest announcement, the Centre was procuring 50 per cent of the total vaccine production while the rest 50 per cent were being bought by the states and private hospitals.

The Centre was providing free vaccines to all aged 45 or more.

The Prime Minister on Monday announced the Centre will procure 75 per cent of the total vaccine production and give free jabs to all aged 18 or more.

However it can't be missed, the Modi government's U-turn in its vaccination policy came only after the Supreme Court slammed Centre over its strategy to inoculate 1.3 billion people in the country.

Questioning the dual pricing policy over vaccines, Justice S Ravindra Bhat had asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who appeared for the Centre, as quoted by Live Law, "The only thing we want to address is the dual pricing policy. You are asking the States to pick up and compete with each other."

Justice Chandrachud had said, "We have some concerns. Now we have a spectacle, where different municipal corporations, different states are issuing global tenders.  We want to know, is this the policy of the Government of India that every Municipal corporation, every state is left to their own to get vaccine.

"Look at the capacity of BMC (Mumbai municipal corporation), it might have a budget comparable with some of our states. Does the Government of India contemplate that for the procurement for foreign vaccines, that there will be individual states or corporations  submitting bids or are you going to be a nodal agency for the bids?"