Calcutta High Court asks Centre for vaccine details: central govt is not sending adequate number of jab

 The state authorities have been saying that the central govt is not sending adequate number of jabs

Calcutta High Court: File picture

Tapas Ghosh   |  TT  |   Calcutta   |  27.07.21  : Calcutta High Court on Monday asked the Centre to inform it how many vaccines it had sent to Bengal till date, specifying how many of them were Covishield and Covaxin doses.

The division bench of Acting Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj asked the Centre to file an affidavit with the details of the vaccine doses sent to Bengal on August 5 when the case would be taken up again.

During the hearing of a number of public interest litigations, the court directed additional solicitor-general Y.J. Dastoor to ask the Centre to file the affidavit.

The PILs were moved with various allegations. Some petitioners contended that vaccines were not available at municipal offices or hospitals and most people did not have money to take the jabs at private health establishments.

A petitioner claimed a large number of people were not getting vaccines after standing for a long time in queues.

The state authorities have been saying that the Centre is not sending adequate number of vaccines.

In one of the petitions, it has been claimed that the Centre has been “discriminatory” in its attitude towards Bengal and has not been sending vaccines according to the need.

The acting chief justice then asked the advocate-general if the state government was taking special care for senior citizens and why old people had to stand in queues for a long time.

Bengal has so far administered over 2.73 crore vaccines — approximately 27.3 per cent of its population — and they include around 81.25 lakh second doses (over 8.12 per cent of the population). The national average at the moment is 25.6 per cent for at least one dose administered and 7 per cent for two doses. In terms of fully vaccinated people, Bengal is second in the nation after Maharashtra (98.9 lakh).

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has repeatedly been alleging that the BJP-led Centre has been meting out step-motherly treatment to Bengal with regard to sending vaccines.

Despite vaccine wastage being “very low” (around 7 per cent) in the state, she said, not enough people have been vaccinated here only because the four crore doses sought — in total — by now have not been given.

The Trinamul Congress chief has been saying that the state government bought 18 lakh doses worth Rs 59 crore on its own before the Centre decided to take full responsibility of sending vaccines to the states.