MUMBAI...

“We conducted tests throughout Monday, by sending text messages to the vaccine beneficiaries. In case, the text messages do not get delivered, we will call them individually. For now, the vaccination will happen on four days a week —Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday,” said Jagtap.

According to BMC officials, until Saturday, they were calling individuals and asking them to come to the respective centres for vaccination, but later they were asked to stop the process, and conduct it only via COWIN application. However, now they have got the go-ahead to restart the process by calling beneficiaries, in case the application does not function.

A total of 1,926 health workers were vaccinated on Saturday, according to BMC, and 200 staffers, including 80 vaccinators, were involved in the process. rally in Nandigram on Tuesday. In Nandigram, Banerjee announced that she was likely to contest her south Kolkata stronghold of Bhabanipur as well — her existing seat — alongside Nandigram. The big announcement appeared to be impromptu.

“I am not announcing any name for the Nandigram assembly seat. I will announce it later. But I promise to field a good candidate who will stay here and work for the people,” she said in her speech.

And seconds later, she added: “How will it be if I contest from Nandigram myself? It is a feeling that I shared. Nandigram finds a place in my heart and soul.” The crowd erupted in a thunderous applause as she announced her decision.

“I won’t be able to give much time to Nandigram before the polls because I am the face for all 294 assembly seats in the state. So, you have to take care of everything. Later, I will do the rest,” Banerjee told the gathering. While the TMC said around 300,000 people attended the rally, Adhikari contended that just 30,000 gathered at the venue.

Members of the Adhikari family have a big support base in East Midnapore. Contai and Tamluk Lok Sabha seats in the district are represented by Adhikari’s father, Sisir, and his elder brother, Dibyendu. There’s a buzz that both could desert the TMC to join the BJP. While Adhikari’s other brother, Soumendu, is already in the BJP, the family members have maintained a distance from the ruling party. No one from the family was present at Banerjee’s rally.

In Nandigram, the Tmc-led movement against acquisition of farmland for a chemical hub witnessed unprecedented violence during the last years of the Left

Front government and, along with the agitation against the proposed small car plant by Tata at Singur in Hooghly district, helped Banerjee end the 34-year Left rule in 2011. The violence in Nandigram, which continued for more than two years, erupted after 14 villagers died in police firing in 2007. Adhikari was one of the faces of the movement against the then Left government.

“Mamata Banerjee played a masterstroke. In one single move, she turned the battle between the TMC and the BJP into a battle between herself and Suvendu,” election analyst and Kolkata-based political science professor Udayan Bandopadhyay said.

“Winning the Nandigram seat will be a tough job for him now given Banerjee’s image and popularity. Moreover, Banerjee’s challenge will force Adhikari to spend most of his time in his home district and Nandigram. He will not be able to work for the BJP in other districts. Banerjee killed many birds with one stone,” he added.

But the BJP attempted to turn the tables on Banerjee, saying she would contest Nandigram apart from Bhabanipur because she was not confident of retaining her seat.

“The BJP had pushed back the TMC (by 496 votes) in Mamata Banerjee’s own ward (KMC Ward No 73) under Bhabanipur assembly constituency in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections... If the CM is not sure, can her party win?” tweeted BJP leader Amit Malviya.

As the political temperature soared, a BJP worker was injured when some people allegedly carrying TMC flags pelted brickbats at the road show led by BJP state president Dilip Ghosh and Adhikari in south Kolkata.

In retaliation, BJP workers allegedly ransacked two-wheelers parked by the side of the road and pelted stones at buildings and shops on Deshpran Sashmal Road in the Charu Market area. Minister Aroop Biswas rushed to the spot as locals staged a roadblock in protest against the violence.

In the 2011 assembly elections, the BJP failed to win a single seat and got a vote share of around 4%. In 2016, it did better, winning three seats and bagging a vote share of around 10%.

Buoyed by the Lok Sabha performance last year (18 of the 42 seats), the BJP is now focusing on the issues of corruption and nepotism, lack of employment, and law and order in the politically charged state. It has set a target to win at least 200 of the 294 seats.

The government said that between Saturday morning and 5pm on Monday, 381,305 people were given doses in 7,704 sessions. Some health workers across the country, who are first in line to get doses, either did not turn up for their appointments, or outages in the digital platform to manage their records meant they were not informed.

The Union government has advised states to call and administer doses to 100 people on average during each session. According to figures collated by HT from across India, the total number of vaccinations by the end of Monday was 429,409.

The turnout dipped from 4,319 on Saturday to 3,593 on Monday (there were no immunisations on Sunday) in the national capital. At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi, only eight people were vaccinated on Monday, an official said, while asking not to be named.

Officials said concerns over the vaccines’ safety appear to have deterred many people. “Initially, health care workers were very keen to get the vaccine. But then because of the infodemic, because of things doing the rounds on social media, because of side effects being highlighted more than what they were, it created a lot of anxiety not only among healthcare workers but also in public at large,” said Dr Randeep Guleria, the director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), in an interview to HT on Monday.

Hesitancy was reported among some beneficiaries in the run-up to the January 16 launch of the vaccination drive. Groups of doctors said they were apprehensive or would not prefer to get doses of Covaxin, the vaccine made by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech. This dose has not yet been tested entirely in Phase 3 trials, and the manufacturers don’t know how effective it is in preventing Covid-19. The other vaccine, Covishield, developed by Oxford-astrazeneca and manufactured by Serum Institute of India, has proved its efficacy in human trials.

Two interns at Delhi’s RML Hospital, who asked not to be identified, said they were aware they could walk in and get the shots on Monday, but expressed concerns over lack of long-term data.

In UP, the state government issued a notice to a government hospital in Kanpur where only 40 people were given doses on Saturday. The state is carrying out immunisations only two days a week, Thursday and Friday from this week onwards.

The problem, as suggested by Guleria, appears to have been made worse by reports of some adverse reactions. Manohar Aghnani, additional secretary in the Union health ministry, said 580 cases of adverse effect following immunisation (AEFI) were reported in the three days.

The Union health ministry has said that most AEFIS have been mild, with symptoms such as pain at injection site, nausea and mild fever. Of the 580 – who represent just 0.15% of those vaccinated – seven required hospitalisations. For of these people were still under admission.

Experts said that these numbers were much below the thresholds for anything that should be worrying and that the risks outweigh the benefits of immunisation. “Acceptable level of AEFI would ideally be zero, but that is not the case. I think it is around 0.2% and yet we are focussing on that and not the 99.8% benefit,” said Dr Shahid Jameel, former CEO of Wellcome Trust/dbt India Alliance.

Officials also reported glitches in the CO-WIN mobile application that vaccinators use to create lists of who will be given doses during a particular session and record their status. “The portal is crashing intermittently, leading to delays. It happened on Saturday and today as well,” said Dr Vidyapati Chaudhary, principal of the Patna Medical College Hospital. “We are not getting the names of beneficiaries on time. As a result, we are unable to contact them telephonically. Some beneficiaries have complained that they did not receive any intimation about their vaccination. Sometimes, midway through the exercise, names of beneficiaries also disappear from the portal.” Similar problems were reported in Delhi, where hospitals allowed health care workers at their facilities to walk in for doses. Their details, an official at one of these centres said while asking not to be named, will be uploaded later.

The problem was such that

Maharashtra suspended the vaccination drive on Saturday after only less than 2,000 people were vaccinated across the state.

A Union health ministry official said glitches in the app were being rectified. “Almost 90% glitches have been addressed. Speed has improved. Session creation and planning has been made more flexible. A lot of the “glitches” are also because of varying degrees of IT awareness of vaccinators,” said this person, asking not to be named. clarified that it would focus chiefly on the issues relating to farm laws, and adjourned the matter for a hearing on Wednesday before the same combination of judges, who, on January 12, stayed the implementation of the three laws and formed a four-member committee to discuss the legislation with both farmers and the government.

Apart from the CJI, justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, comprised that bench.

The bench asked all lawyers to be present on Wednesday when it may take a call on filling up the vacancy in its panel, created by the recusal by one of the members — farm leader Bhupinder Singh Mann — last week. The committee is left with three members — agricultural economists Pramod Kumar Joshi and Ashok Gulati, and Anil Ghanwat, president, Shetkari Sanghatana. The members are scheduled to meet for the first time on Tuesday, though farm unions have said they will not negotiate with the committee. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing Delhi police, told the court that when the matter is taken up on Wednesday, the Centre would make detailed arguments on the dignity attached to the constitutional ceremony of Republic Day parade. “But what can be a constitutional question about a parade?” shot back the CJI.

The unions are planning a rally on January 26 comprising tens of thousands of farmers to push for the repeal of the three laws. The proposed route covers a 60km stretch and passes through Delhi’s Outer Ring Road, covering areas as Peeragarhi, Janakpuri and Munirka. The unions say their march will commence only after the official military parade on Rajpath ends.