JP Nadda, the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), wrote a letter to Sonia Gandhi, his Congress counterpart, on Tuesday, urging her and the party’s chief ministers to work together, “stop misleading people, creating false panic and even contradicting the stands on the vaccination policy.”
The letter arrived a day after the Congress Working Committee declared the second Covid-19 wave a disaster on Monday, “grave calamity and direct consequence of the Modi government’s indifference, insensitivity, and incompetence.”
In his four-page response to Gandhi, Nadda accused Congress leaders of contributing to vaccine hesitancy, “Vaccine that is made in India should be a matter of national pride. Instead, Congress leaders tried to ridicule it and create doubts in the minds of people. Even the chief minister belonging to your party indulged in such antics. In a nation that has almost no recent history of vaccine hesitancy, your party has the dubious record of trying to actively create [it], that too, in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic,” the letter said. “The Congress Working Committee talks about the Modi government ‘abdicating’ its responsibility on vaccination. Is there so much of a communication gap between the Congress party and the states it shares powers in? In April itself, topmost Congress leaders were calling for decentralisation of vaccination.”
Nadda defended the vaccination policy, claiming that by providing over 160 million vaccines to states in the first two phases, it had already ensured significant coverage in priority groups.
There have been a slew of complaints from states about vaccination programme flaws, vaccine shortages, and differential pricing for those over the age of 18.
According to Nadda, BJP-led states have pledged to help the poor and underprivileged by providing free vaccines. “I am sure that Congress governments in various states also feel strongly for the poor, can they also come out with a similar decision to provide vaccines for free?”
The Congress, according to Nadda, is politicising the pandemic and vaccination policy. He went on to say that the top Congress leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, will be remembered for their “duplicity and pettiness” in the fight against the pandemic.
“Your party, under your leadership, is doing no favours to itself by opposing lockdowns and then demanding for the same, ignoring the Centre’s advisories on the second wave of Covid and then saying they did not get any information, holding massive election rallies in Kerala causing a spike in Covid cases while grandstanding about the election rallies elsewhere, supporting protest but speaking about the following Covid guidelines,” the letter said. Nadda also cited a surge in Covid-19 cases in Congress-ruled state such as Punjab.
