2.25 cr doses administered in state despite Centre's deprivation: CM

KOLKATA: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday informed the state Assembly that 2.25 crore doses of vaccines have been administered in the state despite Centre depriving it in supplying adequate quantities of the same.

She further stated, while replying to the speech of Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar at the state Assembly, that Bengal is one of the best states in conducting inoculation drives with timely distribution and administration of cent per cent of the 2 crore vaccines received from the Centre so far.

In the same breath, Banerjee took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing him of leaving no stones for his own publicity through different programmes of the Centre starting from providing vaccines to ration at the time of Covid pandemic.

"We have never seen such a shameless Prime Minister. He always strives for his own publicity. Huge advertisement has been done for some additional food grain that is being provided to people due to the pandemic. It seems there is no one apart from him in the country," Banerjee said.

Giving a strong reply to a BJP MLA's claim about "poor inoculation drive" in the state, Banerjee said: "All these are nothing but baseless claims as we had received 2 crore vaccines from the Centre and 100 per cent of the same have been administered without any delay".

The Chief Minister further said: "Bengal is number one in vaccination drives. But I would like to point out that Bengal has been deprived by the Centre as inadequate vaccines were provided to us. This comes when many states have even received 4.5 crore vaccines."

Reiterating that her government is even ready to procure vaccines to ensure free of cost vaccination for everyone in the state, Banerjee further said so far her government has spent around Rs 75 crore for direct procurement of vaccines.

Expressing her gratitude towards the frontline workers, she further informed the House that the relentless effort of her government has become successful in bringing down the Covid positivity rate to 2.98 percent that went up to33 percent at the last phase of the Assembly elections.