Govt learnt from errors: PC after announcement on centralised vax drive

After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement of centralised COVID-19 vaccination drive for all adults for free, former union minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram on Monday said the underlying message is that the government has learned from their mistakes.

Chidambaram said that nobody said that the Centre should not procure vaccines. “The underlying message was that the Central government learned from its mistakes. They made two cardinal mistakes and made effort to correct those mistakes, but as usual bluff and bluster, the Prime Minister blames the Opposition for the mistakes he committed,” he said. “Nobody, but nobody said that Centre shouldn’t procure vaccines. He (PM) now blames state governments saying — they wanted to procure vaccines so we allowed them. Let us know which CM, which state government, on what date demanded that he should be allowed to procure vaccines.” He also refuted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement that the Centre allowed states to buy vaccines in response to demands from states.

Akhilesh welcomes Centre’s decision on free vaccines

Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday welcomed the Centre’s decision to provide free vaccines to states for all above 18 years starting June 21, and asked people to get themselves vaccinated, Taking a swipe at Yadav for his remarks, UP BJP media co-convenor Navin Srivastava said it is ‘better late than never’.

In a tweet in Hindi, Yadav said, “Seeing the public outrage, the government instead of politicising the corona vaccine announced that it would give the vaccines doses. We were against the BJP’s vaccine but welcome the vaccine of Government of India. I will also get vaccinated. I appeal to those who could not get vaccinated for the lack of vaccines to do so.”