KTR Lambasts Centre Over Vaccine Prices

Telangana IT and Industries Minister K T Rama Rao today criticised the Centre over the pricing of Covid-19 vaccines in India.

In a post on Twitter, Rao questioned the Centre about the "dual pricing" of the Covid-19 vaccine and accused it of having failed to check the different rates at which the vaccines were being given to the Centre and to the state governments.

His tweet said, "We agreed for One Nation – One Tax (GST) But now we see, One Nation – Two different Vaccine prices!? For Govt of India @ Rs 150 And State Govts @ Rs 400 Can't the GoI subsume any additional cost from PM CARES & help rapid vaccination across India? (sic)"

Flaying the Centre for this alleged disparity in the cost of the same vaccine, the minister asked, "How can one company sell the same vaccine at varying prices? What happened to the BJP's One Nation-One Tax policy?"

He then demanded that the Centre bear the additional expenditure for the vaccines which were critical for the vaccination drive being carried out across the country.

The leaders of Telangana have been quite vocal about their dissatisfaction with the Modi government's handling of the allotment of Covid-19 supplies. Just today, Health Minister Etala Rajender also lashed out at it for its "partisan" attitude in allotting Remdesivir injections.

He claimed that where states like Gujarat and Maharashtra, and the capital had been given a large number of Remdesivir doses, some states, like Telangana, had received an inadequate supply of the same.