Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has once again written to Prime Minister Modi seeking adequate supply of vaccines for her State.
In her letter to the Prime Minister Banerjee has said that while her State was capable of administering 11 lakh doses daily it was able to provide only 4 lakh doses per day because of the acute shortage of vaccines.
“We are capable of vaccinating 11 lakh people per day … still we are getting much lower number of doses despite having very high population density and a higher rate of urbanisation,” Banerjee said.
Accusing the Centre of discriminating between the Bengal and BJP-ruled States the Chief Minister told newsmen that States like Gujarat and Karnataka were getting more vaccines than her State.
“I am sorry to say that the Central Government is providing a large number of vaccine doses to States like Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, which are BJP-ruled. I cannot remain a mute spectator to see Bengal being deprived,” said Mamata Banerjee adding “if they do not give me adequate number of vaccines what will I do … from where will get vaccines.”
The Chief Minister had earlier said that the State would require 14 crore doses.
Besides administering 3.08 crore and vaccinating 1.93 crore people Bengal was among the few states that had managed to vaccinate more than 10 lakh people in the age group of 18 and 44, she said reminding that wastage rate in her State was minus 7 percent.
The State government had more than 50 lakh doses at present, sources in the Government said adding this was the second-highest reserve in the country after Maharashtra which had the highest number of doses.
Incidentally Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh had earlier alleged that the State Government had failed to put adequate infrastructure in place which was why it was witnessing huge number of vaccine wastage.
“The Centre is sending adequate amount of vaccines but this Government is so worthless that it has failed to put up proper infrastructure in place which is why vaccines are getting wasted … and they are blaming the Centre for not providing vaccines,” he said, adding “the Chief Minister is complaining that the Centre is discriminating between BJP and non-BJP ruled States … if it is so then how Maharashtra a non-BJP ruled State is getting so many doses.”
Earlier the Calcutta High Court had directed both the State and Central Governments to provide details of vaccine supply and inoculation of people in theState.