States »EasPosted at: Jul 10 2021 1:47PM CORONA : Tripua govt embarrased in HC over false claim of 'maximum vaccinated'
Earlier, Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb government earned a huge round of applause across the country for it’s claim of vaccinating 80 per cent population of all eligible age groups with first dose and in case of above 45 yrs it was 98 percent.
The division bench of Chief Justice Akil Kureshi and Justice Arindam Lodh during hearing of an PIL regarding COVID situation in Tripura nullified the claim that Tripura became top in the country in terms of vaccination, and observed neither of these two claims were accurate while directing Mission Director of National Health Mission Tripura to disseminate correct information without any further delay.
Referring to the affidavit of the state government, the bench found Tripura has approximately 26.86 lakh people belonging to 18 years above age group and 12.36 lakhs are above 45 yrs age who are eligible for getting the vaccine. When Dr Siddharth Shib Jaiswal, Mission Director of the National Health Mission, Tripura made the claims of highest vaccination, the total vaccines administered were 24,26,803 of which 5,66,458 were second dose out of the total eligible population.
“Perhaps, he has taken the total doses of vaccines administered to arrive at this 80 percent coverage, forgetting that a substantial part of it was administered to the same person as a second dose. Total vaccine doses administered to people over 45 years as on that date was 14,36,595. Second dose was by then given to 5,66,458 people. Thus around nine lakh were given vaccines, which certainly does not come to 98 percent,” the court observed.
Criticising the government, high court stated, “From the beginning we have been putting great stress on reliability of public information distribution because we believe that it is only when there is total transparency and accuracy in data provided by the State machinery that the people will understand the correct picture and will have faith in data distribution system. When a responsible officer provided information which was inaccurate, we expect him to issue a correction statement to the press,” the court added.
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