On the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) completion of seven years in power at the Centre, former Maharashtra Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan launched a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday. Mr. Chavan claimed that the Centre’s vaccine policy was “a major scam” and demanded a probe into it, while alleging complete mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Central government’s part.
He said that never in the history of independent India had the Centre shifted the responsibilities of vaccine manufacturing and procuring to the State governments. “The Central government is expected to provide free vaccines to citizens of the country. Instead, it is shifting this responsibility to State governments. Why are different prices being quoted for Central, State governments and private hospitals? Moreover, the Centre ought to have placed an order of 200 crore vaccine doses much earlier by which the vaccine costs would have been reduced,” said the Congressman, speaking in Pune.
He pointed out that the ‘splitting’ of vaccine orders — by the Centre, State and other entities — only ended up benefiting private vaccine manufacturers.
“Last year, the MD of Bharat Biotech had claimed that Covaxin would be cheaper than the cost of a water bottle. So, going by that, a vaccine should not cost more than ₹150-₹180. Yet, vaccines are being sold at rates as high as ₹1,000 to private establishments while being sold at a reasonable rate to the Centre. It is the Central government’s responsibility to have procured as many vaccine doses, pooled it together and then given it to States,” Mr. Chavan said.
He further said that jobs to the tune of ₹12,500 crore were lost during the COVID-19 pandemic and that the Centre had done nothing to ameliorate the condition of those whose livelihoods had been wiped out.
Detailing a litany of “disastrous blunders” committed by the Modi government including the inopportune demonetisation move, Mr. Chavan castigated the Prime Minister and Home Minister Amit Shah for “relentlessly pursuing a nationalistic agenda for the last seven years” instead of seriously creating development-based opportunities for the public.
“The Modi-Shah administration has repeatedly proven itself to be repressive, authoritarian and one which brooks no dissent... In the absence of a majority, they repealed Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir and aggravated communal tensions. Then, Prime Minister Modi made political use of the jawans killed in the Pulwama terror attack,” alleged Mr. Chavan, speaking in Pune.
The Congress leader said that in stark contrast to the Pulwama attack, Mr. Modi had remained conspicuously silent in aftermath of the Galwan Valley clashes last year with Chinese armed forces that left 20 Indian soldiers dead.
“Due to the Prime Minister’s ego, the Indian economy has gone into a tailspin. Even before the onset of the pandemic, the country’s growth rate had sharply plummeted owing to such ill-advised moves as demonetisation. At present, India’s per capita income is even lower than that of Bangladesh,” Mr. Chavan said.
Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole alleged that during the first COVID-19 wave, the Modi government was busy entertaining former US President Donald Trump with the extravagant ‘Namaste Trump’ event. “In the second wave of the pandemic, the BJP and the PM were busy campaigning for the State Assembly elections. The health and safety of 130 crore people was never the Prime Minister’s priority it seems,” Mr. Patole said.
Demanding Mr. Modi’s resignation, the MPCC chief said that the Prime Minister owed the country’s public an explanation for not taking the COVID-19 situation seriously.
The Congress held protests in various parts of the State against the Modi government to mark the BJP’s seventh year of power at the Centre as a ‘black day’.
Likewise, the Shiv Sena, which shares power with the Congress in the tripartite Maha Vikas Aghadi government, said that the Central Modi government needed to introspect on whether it had been able to fulfil the basic needs of people.
“The country is surviving on the good deeds of previous governments since the time of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru to Manmohan Singh,” said Sena MP and spokesman Sanjay Raut, adding that the Modi government had a lot to do in terms of bringing down unemployment, inflation and soaring fuel prices.
