Tope charges Central Government of bias in supply of vaccines to Maharashtra
Nagpur: Charging the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) Government of pushing the state into deathly situation on Covid front, the former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis said that the Thackeray Government is playing politics over vaccine shortage, to divert attention away from its own failures in handling the situation. Tope had said that
Fadnavis was responding to the statement of State Health Minister Rajesh Tope accusing the Central Government of bias in supplying less quota of vaccines to Maharashtra in comparison to Gujarat and othe BJP ruled states. Tope had further said that the state government has vaccines to last just 3 days and had demanded 40 lakh doses weekly to scale up vaccination in the state. “The Central Government supplied Gujarat with 1 crore doses of vaccines despite having less population than Maharashtra which has got only 1.40 crore doses of the vaccines,” Tope had charged.
Responding to Tope’s charge, Fadnavis said, “Look at the precarious situation in a state where patients aren’t getting ventilators, oxygenated beds, and even simple beds in government and private hospitals. There’s a massive shortage of Remdesivir and other essential medicines. All these factors aren’t in the hands of the Centre. Basically, this government has failed to fulfil its responsibility of providing basic services. None of the MVA ministers are talking about these issues,” Fadnavis said.
Fadnavis said Maharashtra received 1.06 crore vaccines. That means there are 1.5 million vaccines left. So, what is the reason for deliberately closing the Centre today and spreading false news about vaccines? He further said that only three states — Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Rajasthan — have received more than one crore vaccines. Gujarat and Rajasthan have the same population. The supply of vaccines is not on the basis of population, but on the basis of vaccination performance of each state, he stated.
