NEW DELHI: Congress on Saturday launched a broadside against Union Minister for State for Information and Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar for accusing Congress leaders of pushing the case of foreign vaccines at the peak of Covid-19 last year.
Referring to his tweet, Chandrasekhar’s allegations, AICC general secretary Jairam Ramesh said that the minister is peddling lies and the party wouldn’t tolerate it. “Rajeev Chandrasekhar, as Minister concerned with regulating social media, you have misused it atrociously to peddle lies on me and my colleague P Chidambaram,” he tweeted.
“We won’t take it lying down. Meanwhile, I wanted to call you out for what you really are. Will Twitter have the guts to expose you?” he said.It all started after Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer faced questions on the effectiveness of the company’s Covid-19 vaccines at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Friday. As Bourla evaded questions on vaccines, Chandrashekhar took to twitter accusing Congress leaders Rahul Gandhi, P Chidamabaram and Jairam Ramesh for pushing the case of foreign vaccines during Covid.
“Just to remind all Indians, that Pfizer tried to bully the Indian government into accepting conditions of indemnity. The Congress trio of Rahul, Chidamabaram and Jairam Ramesh kept pushing the case of foreign vaccines during Covid,” the minister said.
At the peak of the pandemic in 2021, India was in talks with Pharma giant Pfizer as the roll out of its Covid-19 vaccines hit the roadblock for issues regarding indemnity. Indemnity allows immunity to vaccine-makers from legal proceedings in the event of adverse results.In April 2021, as India was struggling to contain the spread of the virus, Rahul Gandhi has written to PM Modi to allow emergency use authorisation of all vaccine candidates that have the required clearances.
On December 27, 2021, Congress leader Chidambaram also said in a tweet that, “it is surprising only three vaccines have been made available in India — Covishield, Covaxin and Sputnik”. Attaching a video of Pfizer CEO’s encounter with a journalist in Davos, Chandrasekhar had also alleged that the US pharma company tried to coerce the Indian government into accepting conditions of indemnity.