Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked politicians not to jump the queue as vaccinations begin for Covid-19. He asked them to wait for their turn to get inoculated after healthcare personnel and other frontline workers.
PM Modi’s comment came after the Haryana government’s request to give priority to public representatives like MPs and MLAs in the states and include their names in the first phase list. He was speaking to Chief Ministers via video conferencing.
On November 24, at the last meeting between the PM and the CMs of a few states, Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar had made the request from the PM to give priority to MLAs and MPs. The Prime Minister had not answered Khattar then. Later, state health minister Anil Vij had written to the Union health ministry, but received no answer either.
The government has already prepared a list of people for the first phase of vaccination, which is headed by one crore health workers and two crore frontline workers including police, civil defence personnel and sanitization workers, the government has made Covid-19 vaccine free for these people.
The government prepared a list in which other high risk groups in which government included people who are above the age of 50 years, those with co-morbidities like diabetes and hypertension will also be vaccinated in the first phase.
Apart from the Haryana CM, Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan, the health ministers of Bihar and Odisha had demanded that public representatives from panchayats to Parliament should be considered frontline workers and be vaccinated in the first phase. Later, Vardhan said everyone in the country cannot be vaccinated at this point, he said the quantity of doses is less and it is not possible to vaccinate all the people simultaneously.
Serum Institute of India Chief Executive Officer Adar Poonawalla had said recently that once the government allowed it to release the vaccine in the market, it will be put out at a cost of Rs 1,000 per dose.