TNCC president K.S. Alagiri on Friday wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind, urging him to direct the Narendra Modi-led Central government to ensure universal free vaccination against COVID-19 for every citizen. The government should also ensure that one crore people are vaccinated every day, which is the only way to defeat the pandemic.
“COVID-19 has caused unprecedented devastation and immeasurable pain to nearly every Indian family. Tragically, the Modi government has completely abdicated its duty of fighting coronavirus and abandoned the people. The truth is that the Union BJP government is guilty of criminal mismanagement of COVID-19,” Mr. Alagiri said.
The Modi government’s vaccination strategy had been “a dangerous cocktail of blunders and bloopers”, he said.
The government deliberately created a digital divide, thereby slowing down vaccination, and was also wilfully complicit in creating multiple pricing slabs for the same vaccine. The Centre and the States had till date ordered only 39 crore vaccines for a population of 140 crore. The average pace of vaccination was 16 lakh per day, at which pace it will take three years to vaccinate the adult population, the Congress leader said. “The only way to save people’s lives is to vaccinate the entire adult population on or before December 31,” he added.
A delegation of leaders of the Puducherry Pradesh Congress Committee submitted a memorandum addressed to the President, seeking his intervention in the vaccination programme to ensure that at least one crore people are administered the jabs every day under a universal free immunisation programme.
