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See if you can give Covid vaccine free, Kerala high court to Centre
Kerala high court’s Justice Vinod Chandran said the Centre could spend a part of the ₹99,000 crore dividend announced by the RBI to fund free vaccines.
Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala High Court on Monday asked the Centre why it wasn’t giving the Covid-19 vaccines free to people, adding that it could use part of the ₹99,000 crore dividend announced by the Reserve Bank of India to fund the initiative.
Justice Vinod Chandran made the suggestion during a hearing of a petition that challenged the differential pricing adopted for the vaccines, depending on who buys the dose. The judge said the free vaccines would cost the central exchequer about ₹34,000 crore, pointing that the Centre could dip into the ₹99,122 crore dividend announced by the central bank last week.
“You have an additional income from the RBI, why don’t you use it for this purpose. We are asking you to ask your policy makers about this,” the court told Raj Kumar, the standing counsel for the Union government.
Raj Kumar said the pricing of the vaccines was a policy issue and he needed time to get back on this.
But he also underlined that the Centre was giving the vaccines free of cost to people above 45 years of age and about 80 lakh vaccines had already been given to Kerala.
At this point, the court said this was not the time to get into matters of federalism and centre-state relations.
In Kerala, 20 lakh people have received both doses of the vaccine. Another 60 lakh have got the first jab. But the state has been able to get only 5 lakh vaccines on payment basis. It has placed orders for 1 crore vaccines; 70 lakh Covishield and 30 lakh Covaxin doses.
The Supreme Court is already hearing a petition that has questioned the differential pricing for the vaccines. At a hearing earlier this month, the top court observed that the existing policy will “result in a detriment to the right to public health” and indicated that there were several aspects of the vaccine pricing policy adopted by the Central government which require that policy be revisited.
West Bengal and Rajasthan governments have already announced plans to approach the Supreme Court to seek a new policy that adopts uniform pricing and distribution for Covid-19 vaccines.
Meanwhile, Kerala reported 17,821 new cases on Monday when 87,331 samples were tested with a test positivity rate of 20.41 per cent. The state also reported 196 deaths and active covid-19 cases are 2,59,179, according to the data released by the state health ministry.
