12 Opposition leaders write to PM Modi, demand free vax

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, May 12

Twelve Opposition leaders, including Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, TMC president Mamata Banerjee and NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, today wrote to PM Narendra Modi, demanding a free, universal mass vaccination campaign across the country. The leaders said the pandemic had assumed unprecedented dimensions of a human catastrophe.

“We have repeatedly in the past drawn your attention, independently and jointly, to the various measures that are absolutely imperative for the Central Government to undertake and implement. Unfortunately, your government has either ignored or refused all these suggestions. This only compounded the situation to reach such an apocalyptic human tragedy,” they said. The leaders urged the PM to procure vaccines from all available sources; begin a free, mass vaccination drive; spend budgetary allocation of Rs 35,000 crore on vaccines and suspend Central Vista construction and use the money for oxygen and vaccines.