The Congress party in Karnataka on Friday announced that it has prepared a ₹100 crore plan to procure vaccines directly from manufacturers and administer them to the people.

Addressing a joint press conference, Congress party state president D K Shivakumar and Leader of the Opposition and Former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said “Since the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre and Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa-led state government have collectively failed to vaccinate the masses. Here, we want to step in to do it ourselves."

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"For the rollout, we just need two small permissions - one from the Central government and another from the State government. My appeal to the BJP is to not let politics come in the way and in the spirit of Atmanirbhar Bharat allow Congress to directly procure and administer vaccines,” said Shivakumar.

Demands permission

Currently, vaccine procurement rules in the country only allows Central and State governments, hospitals and industries to directly procure vaccines. The Karnataka Congress has demanded permission be given to them as well.

Shivakumar said the Congress had a ₹100 crore plan to kick start the vaccination drive, of which ₹10 crore is contributed by Karnataka Congress party and the balance ₹90 crore is being mobilised from the Congress MLA/MLC funds.

“I appeal to the Yediyurappa government to please allow us to use the MLA/MLC funds to procure vaccines directly in a transparent manner because the Modi and Yediyurappa governments are failing to do so for months now,” he added.

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