A Division Bench of the Kerala High Court on Monday asked the Centre why it cannot use the surplus dividend it got from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for administering COVID vaccines free of cost to people, especially to the poor.
The Bench made the oral observation when a writ petition challenging the Centre’s liberalised pricing and accelerated national COVID-19 vaccination strategy and other COVID vaccination-related cases came up for hearing.
The Bench also asked the Centre what was the rationale behind its stance that the State should administer the vaccines free of cost to the people in the age group of 18 to 44 on its own, especially when the Centre did not supply the vaccines for this group free of cost. The court also reminded the Centre that it was not time to talk about federalism.
The court also orally pointed out that the cost for free vaccination for the whole population would be around ₹34,000 crore if reckoned by the price at which the Centre procured the vaccine. The court asked the Centre why could not it utilise the surplus dividend of ₹53,510 crore received from the RBI for administering free vaccines, at least for the poor.
When counsel for the Centre submitted that it was in the realm of Central policies, the court said it was telling policymakers that they had so much money and so why did not they do it. In fact, the court did not want to influence the Centre’s policy decision.
The court also asked the Centre to inform when it could supply the COVID vaccines ordered by the State government.
State Attorney K.V. Sohan submitted that the government was taking all efforts to ensure that everyone was vaccinated but were adversely affected due to the short supply of vaccines. The State had placed a purchase order for one crore doses of vaccine, including 70 lakh doses of Covishield and 30 lakh doses of Covaxin. Even though the order was placed, it was communicated by the Centre that vaccine supply other than through Centre’s channels would be limited for a couple of months. Therefore, the State government had initiated the process of inviting global tender for the purchase of vaccines.
The total doses needed to complete two doses of vaccine for those aged 45 years and above was 1,59,71,710. As many as 25,954 beneficiaries in the age group of 18 to 44 had been administered the first dose of vaccine. A total of 1.41 crore doses were required to complete the first dose to the group and another 1.5 crore doses for the second dose.
Besides, 2,43,028 additional doses were required to complete two doses for healthcare and front-line eorkers, he submitted.
