Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday targeted the Narendra Modi government over ‘high’ vaccine prices and said while the system ensured profits for Mr. Modi’s friends, it failed the citizens.
Separately, the party demanded that either Health Minister Harsh Vardhan resigns on his own or be dismissed for claiming that “the situation this year was better compared with last year”.
“People’s money was given to vaccine companies to develop COVID vaccines. Now, GOI will make the same people pay the highest price in the world for these vaccines. Again, the failed ‘system’ fails our citizens for Modi-mitrs’ profit,” Mr. Gandhi said on twitter.
Rajya Sabha member and senior leader Jairam Ramesh tweeted, “In January 2021, the Modi government set a target of vaccinating 30 crore Indians by August. While 12.12 crore have received 1 dose of vaccine, ONLY 2.36 crore are FULLY vaccinated. That’s around 8%.
“Increasing vaccine supply and rate of vaccination must be of HIGHEST priority, and is a huge collective enterprise.”
Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate alleged that people are unable to log on to the CoWIN web portal for registering themselves for the next vaccination phase starting May 1 and said States like Rajasthan and Punjab have not been given any assurance by the Serum Institute of India (SII) on their orders for rolling out vaccination for everyone above 18 years.
Atmosphere of fear
Ms. Shrinate said an atmosphere of fear has gripped the country, especially Delhi, with people dying because of lack of treatment, acute shortage of hospital beds, oxygen and life saving drugs and cremation and burial grounds overflowing with bodies.
“In the midst of such helplessness, our Health Minister claims the situation is better this year compared with last year. I say this with all respect and responsibility that he may have suffered a serious brain injury and if that’s not the case, then he has forgotten the basic values of humanity….Who is responsible for such mismanagement? Since we don’t expect him to take any moral responsibility, he should be dismissed,” she said at a virtual press conference.
The party also slammed the Centre for declaring the Central Vista project as an “essential service” to ensure that construction work for the project including a new Parliament can go on.
“Central Vista-not essential. Central government with a vision-essential,” Mr. Gandhi said in a tweet.
The Central Vista revamp project, announced in September last year, envisages a new triangular Parliament building with a seating capacity for 900 to 1,200 MPs, and is trying to meet the deadline of August, 2022 when the country celebrates its 75th Independence Day.
