Harish Rao Flays Centre For Vaccine-Related Issues

Telangana Finance Minister T Harish Rao today launched a rather caustic attack on the BJP-led Centre for allegedly having failed to supply adequate stocks of Covid-19 vaccines to the state.

Hitting out at the Modi government for "creating problems" that were hindering the purchase of adequate stocks of Covid-19 vaccines, Rao told the media that due to the "misled and improper policies" of the Centre, state governments in India were not being able to speed up the vaccination drive.

The minister demanded that the Centre simplify the process of vaccines procurement from abroad claiming that this would help state governments across the nation to conduct immunisation drives.

He accused the Centre of being unable to fly in vaccines from abroad, and asked, "What is the need to export injections to other nations when our own people are being unable to get vaccinated due to continuing shortages?"

Further, he alleged that the Centre was "dictating terms" to the states and was asking them to conduct vaccination drives without even providing the necessary stocks of vaccines for the same.

"The Centre is neither supplying necessary stocks of vaccines nor is it allowing the states to purchase directly from the manufacturing companies. Telangana sought the permission of the Centre to procure vaccine stocks. But our pleas were ignored. It is ironic that even though Hyderabad produces vaccines for the rest of the world, the people in Telangana still remain unvaccinated due to shortages," he fumed.

However, Rao did also assure the people that the KCR government would vaccinate all sections of people in a phased manner.

"Priority-based drives are being conducted for various high-risk groups currently. But, we will soon speed up our vaccination drive as soon as more stocks of injections are procured. I appeal to the Centre to take immediate action to bring vaccines from abroad to distribute among the states and to increase domestic production as well. There is an urgent need to simplify the norms for vaccine purchase as well," he stated.