Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, May 28: The centre on Friday gave a firm assurance to the country that almost all the citizens in the country will be fully vaccinated by the end of the current year.
The commitment came from the union information and broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar who quoted the health ministry’s roadmap for vaccination in response to the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s attack on the government and holding the prime minister Narendra Modi “responsible” for the damages caused to the country in the second wave of Coronavirus.
Criticising Gandhi for saying that only three per cent of the Indian population had so far been inoculated, Javadekar said all Indians would be vaccinated against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) by the end of this year. “The health ministry last week made it clear that within December the nation will produce 216 crore doses of Covid-19 vaccines which means that at least 108 crore people will be able to get their jabs. So Rahul Gandhi should understand that India will vaccinate all by December 2021,” Javadekar said at a press conference.
Javadekar was responding to Gandhi’s criticism of the government at a media conference earlier in the day claiming that the current pace of its vaccination drive would further lead to multiple waves of Covid-19 and India would be able to vaccinate everyone only by May, 2024. He also held Modi entirely responsible for the second wave of the pandemic and the damages caused to the country by it. “He is responsible for the second wave of Covid-19,” Gandhi said. The Congress leader also called Modi an ‘event manager.’
This led to a war of words between the Congress and the BJP and later Javadekar also attacked Rahul Gandhi for using the word “nautanki or drama” in Hindi during his press conference. The Union minister said using such terms while the nation faced a crisis was akin to insulting the efforts of the government to contain the pandemic.
“India has administered 20 crore vaccines so far and ranks second in terms of jabs administered. If Rahul Gandhi is indeed worried about vaccination rates, he should concentrate on how Congress-governed states are conducting their respective vaccination drives. Those states have not been able to vaccinate people aged between 18-45 years even though quotas were assigned to them,” Javadekar added.
Javadekar also took a jab at Gandhi over a document, which the BJP claims was made by Congress in a bid to defame Modi and attack the government over its handling of the second wave of Covid-19, an allegation which Congress has denied.
“Vaccines are being produced and by December 216 crore doses will be administered, but one thing is clear and one does not require proof that the ‘toolkit’ is created by you,” Javadekar said referring to the current controversy on the alleged “Congress Toolkit” on which the Twitter recently tagged several BJP tweets as “manipulated media.”
Javadekar also said that the Covid-19 vaccination programme was robust and would successfully vaccinate every citizen.
Earlier in a virtual press conference on Covid, Gandhi had asked the government to stop the blame game and procure vaccines from wherever it can. He advised the government to form a panel that is mandated to meet daily to interact with top experts to devise strategies for India’s battle against Covid.
He pointed out the US has vaccinated 50% of its population and even countries such as Brazil are ahead of India. Gandhi sought the setting up of the panel, saying the strategy so far has been completely wrong. “The RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh]-BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] do not allow the PM [Prime Minister] to get any information. He should form a panel that would meet daily and talk to experts to make the strategy.” He asked Modi to involve others as well.
Gandhi blamed the Centre for having kept the door wide open for the virus to circulate and added various stakeholders need to be on the same page to keep it out. “If [Chhattisgarh chief minister] Bhupesh Baghel, [his West Bengal counterpart] Mamata Banerjee and Modi are on the same page, coronavirus can be kept out,” he said. “Many people and I had been giving non-stop warnings against Covid. But the PM declared victory, saying Covid has been defeated.”
Gandhi said the problem is that the government and the PM did not even understand that Covid-19 is an evolving disease. “The more you give time and space to the virus, the more dangerous it becomes,” he said. He emphasised that only the vaccine is a permanent solution while lockdown, masks, and social distancing are temporary solutions. “I told the PM, if you do not implement vaccine strategy properly, Covid waves will continue to come. There will be fourth, fifth, sixth waves too,” he said.
The war of words between Gandhi and Javadekar came even as India recorded 1.86 lakh new covid-19 cases in the 24 hours ending 8 am Friday, the lowest spike in daily infections in the last 44 days. The number of active cases further declined to 23.43 lakh while over 2.48 crore people have recovered from the virus till now. With 3,660 new fatalities, the death toll is now over 3.18 lakh.
