Special Congress Party Briefing by Shri P Chidambaram, Shri Ajay Maken and Shri Jairam Ramesh. Excerpts:

Our best wishes to Dr. Manmohan Singh for his full and speedy recovery. He is still in Hospital, but, I am told that he is stable and the progress is good

Govt of India has finally acknowledged problem of vaccine shortage & other deficiencies in current vaccine policy. While we welcome positive changes made, details show that the modified vaccine policy is, in crucial respects, regressive & inequitable

Under the modified vaccine policy, States will bear the responsibility & cost of vaccinating the poorer sections who are below the age of 45 years & are neither Health Care workers nor Frontline workers, as defined by the central government

GoI appears to have abdicated its responsibility towards poor by excluding them from its vaccination programme. In a country where median age is 28 yrs, to leave those < 45 yrs out of a public-funded programme is, to say the least, callous

The migrant workers who live and work in other states and are the lifeblood of the economy of our cities will be the worst affected by this directive

By liberalising the pricing of vaccine, and by not fixing a price for states at the same rate as it is available to the Union Government, the government is paving the way to unhealthy price bidding and profiteering

States with limited resources will be at considerable disadvantage. States that are already weighed down by shrinking GST revenues, lower tax devolution, reduced grants-in-aid and increased borrowing would have to bear this additional burden

Meanwhile, nobody knows where the thousands of crores of rupees collected under PM-CARES are being deployed

Union government’s vaccine policy refuses to grasp that the problem is not only of production, but also of financing, procurement and distribution of the vaccines, and of coordination with the states

Ignoring the suggestion of Dr. Manmohan Singh in his letter to the Prime Minister, the modified vaccine policy does not provide funds for capital investment to the vaccine manufacturers to ramp up production

Furthermore, the modified policy does not invoke the provisions in law for compulsory licensing to allow other domestic vaccine manufacturers to manufacture the approved vaccines and augment total supply

It is also not clear if the central government will take the initiative to import foreign-made vaccines and distribute them among the states

Under modified vaccine policy, Union Govt is running away from taking responsibility, overburdens the states, encourages vaccine manufacturers to profiteer, and will worsen the inequality between states as well between poor and rich Indians

Nowhere in the world has any government left its vaccination programme to be determined by the vagaries of market forces, and for good reason

We hope that the five points made by us above in a spirit of constructive cooperation at this time of grave national crisis will be considered seriously by the Central Government