AAP attacks Centre over vaccine exports, BJP hits back

Addressing a press conference, senior AAP Raghav Chadha said, “As many as 109 vaccination centres in Pune were shut down due to deficiency of doses. In Mumbai, 26 vaccination centres were locked... In Odisha, more than 700 such centres were shut down... The amount of Covid vaccine doses exported or gifted to other countries by India is more than the number of people inoculated in our own nation.”

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled central government for exporting 64.5 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines to 84 countries, even as several states across the country claimed they were short of jabs.

Chadha said at a time when Covid-19 cases are on a steep rise, the Centre’s focus should be to get everyone inoculated. (ANI)

Addressing a press conference, senior AAP leader and national spokesperson Raghav Chadha said, “As many as 109 vaccination centres in Pune were shut down due to deficiency of doses. In Mumbai, 26 vaccination centres were locked... In Odisha, more than 700 such centres were shut down... The amount of Covid vaccine doses exported or gifted to other countries by India is more than the number of people inoculated in our own nation.” He did not specify the number of doses available in Delhi. State health minister Satyendar Jain on Thursday said Delhi has vaccines for the next four to five days.

Chadha said at a time when Covid-19 cases are on a steep rise, the Centre’s focus should be to get everyone inoculated. For this, CM Arvind Kejriwal has appealed to the Centre to open vaccination for all adult citizens.

“Once the entire Indian population has been successfully vaccinated, it is then that we should export it to other nations...,” he said.

Union health minister Harsh Vardhan on Friday reiterated that there was no shortage and the country has more than 43 million doses in stock or in the pipeline.

The Delhi BJP also hit back, saying that the AAP is trying to spread ‘misinformation’.

“Today...Chadha quoted figures of stock availability of different states, but kept mum on Delhi’s vaccination stock because there is no such shortage in Delhi. In the AAP’s bid to be seen on a national platform, it is trying to create confusion on vaccine stock,” said Delhi BJP spokesperson Praveen Shankar Kapoor.

‘PM backs Delhi model’

In another press conference, senior AAP spokesperson Atishi said that in a meeting with the chief ministers, PM Narendra Modi on Thursday made suggestions to tackle Covid-19 which were part of the Kejriwal model. “The PM has asked states to implement home isolation, aggressive testing and micro-containment zones -- models that the Kejriwal government put in place -- to tackle Covid-19 across the country. It is the same model that the Union home minister [Amit Shah] rejected last year when Delhi government first introduced home isolation for asymptomatic and mild Covid-19 patients. Today, while 13 lakh Covid-19 tests are being conducted in the whole country, one lakh tests are being conducted in Delhi itself,” she said.

The Delhi BJP said AAP and Atishi “cleverly ignored” Shah’s intervention in controlling the first wave of Covid-19 in Delhi.