New Delhi
Congress on Saturday sought the arrest of an uncle and his nephew for making money from the Covid vaccines at Jayanagar in Bengaluru by advertising early this week to make people go to a private Vasavi Hospital for vaccination at Rs900 a dose.
The vaccine drive is advertised as “supported by office of Tejasvi Surya, Bengaluru South MP”. Congress spokesman Pawan Khera told a Press meet in Delhi his party has no problem in an MP promoting vaccination, but it was shocked from audio recording in Kannada in circulation, in which a hospital supervisor is telling a person on phone he can’t reduce the charge since Rs700 of this Rs900 has to go to Ravi Subramanya, BJP MLA for the third term from Basavanagudi in Karnataka Assembly.
Tejasvi, president of Bharatiya Yuva Morcha and a blue-eyed boy of Prime Minister Modi, is the nephew of this MLA.
Citing a precedent of the MPs expelled in a sordid affair of “cash for questions” to ask questions in Parliament, Khera demanded that both uncle and nephew should be arrested by registering an FIR and expelled from their respective Houses for this “cash for vaccines” scam.
Advertisement of the vaccine drive itself raises doubt if Tejasvi is promoting a genuine vaccine or a fake one since what was on offer is “Covidshield” and not the Covishield produced by Pune’s Serum Institute of India (SII) and supplied to hospitals by the government.
Khera said more serious is the fact that this vaccine scam has happened in Karnataka ruled by the BJP, where the government claims it has exhausted the vaccines. Are the vaccines being siphoned to private hospitals by persons like BJP MP Tejasvi to take advantage of the people’s helplessness to make money in vaccination.