Taking a swipe at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for saying that country is witnessing “vaccine starvation”, Senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday said it is not India that is facing vaccine starvation but “Shri Gandhi is facing attention starvation.”
Former Congress president has in a letter to Prime Minister demanded that export of vaccines be immediately be halted “amidst domestic shortages”.
Hitting back at the Congress leader, Prasad accused Rahul of lobbying for pharma companies “by asking for arbitrary approvals for foreign vaccines.”
“Why has Rahul Gandhi not yet taken vaccine? Is it an oversight or he doesn’t want it or has he already taken one in many of his undisclosed trips to foreign locations but doesn’t want to disclose?”, Tweeted Prasad in an aside.
“After failing as a part-time politician, has Rahul Gandhi switched to full-time lobbying? First, he lobbied for fighter plane companies by trying to derail India’s acquisition programme. Now he is lobbying for pharma companies by asking for arbitrary approvals for foreign vaccines”, said the Union minister.
Prasad claimed that Rahul does not have proper understandings of the strategy that needed to be adopted to counter the Coronavirus pandemic in the country.
“Fighting a pandemic is not a one trick game. Apart from vaccination, there needs to be adequate focus on testing, tracing & treating. Rahul Gandhi’s problem is that he doesn’t understand all this and his ignorance is compounded by his arrogance”, said the BJP leader.
Prasad denied charge of shortage of vaccine in the Congress-ruled states.
“Rahul Gandhi must know that shortage in Congress-ruled states is not of vaccines but of basic commitment towards health care.
“He should write letters to his party’s Governments to stop their vasooli ventures & concentrate on administering the lakhs of vaccines they r sitting upon”, said the Minister.
Amidst the talk of shortage of vaccine supply in the country and it’s supply to foreign nations, Maharashtra Shiv Sena headed Government which is currently draggers drawn with the central Government, has accused the Modi-Government of showing bias against non-BJP-ruled states in the supply of vaccines. Maharashtra is the worst affected State in the country with the highest positive cases in the country.
The charge was denied by Union Minister Pralhad Javadekar on Thursday when he said 23 lakh does were available with the Maharashtra government on a daily basis and the latter needs to efficiently distribute them in the State, he said.
The second surge in Coronavirus cases have made it more so necessary that a majority of the population of all age groups get the vaccine jab as soon as possible and that would require an uninterrupted supply of vaccine does and speedy reduction in their wastage.