BENGALURU: Congress leaders in Karnataka have urged the Union Government to vaccinate at least one crore citizens every day. A delegation of Karnataka Congress leaders, led by KPCC president D K Shivakumar, on Friday submitted a memorandum to Governor Vaju Bhai seeking the President’s intervention and to issue directives to the government to ramp up the vaccination drive immediately.
Shivakumar, in his letter to the President via the Governor, said only if one crore Indians are inoculated per day will the entire country be vaccinated in the next few months. He also warned that given the current inoculation rate, it might take three years to fully vaccinate all citizens.
“We asked the State and Union governments to give Congress party permission to procure vaccines, but they denied it. We asked the Chief Minister to release the Local Area Development Fund, which is people’s money, so that we can use it to vaccine people in our constituencies, but that was also not permitted. At least let the government vaccinate more people every day,” Shivakumar said.
“As per the Centre, it has administered 21.31 crore doses of vaccines till May 3. But, only 4.45 core Indians have received both doses of the vaccine, which is only 3.17 per cent of India’s population,” the memorandum pointed out.
Earlier in the day, Congress leaders Krishna Byregowda, Rizwan Arshad and Priyank Kharge pointed out to the slow vaccination pace and pricing variance that is leaving the poor and non-tech savvy out of the vaccination cover.
“It has been two months, but the govenrment has not been able to solve the issue. The government has no vaccines and the poor and vulnerable are losing out, but private hospitals have vaccines being sold at Rs 1,200 per dose. What are the poor to do? Are their lives not important,” they asked.