'Consider more vaccine registrations per phone'

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Wednesday asked the Centre to consider increasing the number of Covid vaccine registrations allowed per mobile phone amid a sharp digital divide in the national vaccinationation programme - one that is widening by the day.

A division bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh said, "How many people have smartphones? Somebody may not have a smartphone. A family may be of 10 members and there will be only one smartphone, the others will be left out then."

The court also told the Centre that it does not want to hear stereotypical replies from it that "everything is alright".

While making these observations, the high court also noted that more walk-in registrations should be allowed for Covid vaccinations.

These remarks came as the court was hearing a note sent in by the Internet Freedom Foundation with regards to the CoWIN portal, which is being used for vaccine registrations.

The IFF noted that as per the current policy, each mobile phone allows the registration of four people for vaccine appointments. It also went on to point out that there were concerns of breach of privacy with the application. To this, the Centre told the court that a privacy policy for the application would soon be uploaded on a government website and that the court would get a copy of it. As for ease of access for the differently-abled, the high court asked the Centre to explore options of introducing voice-enabled CAPTCHA or OTP verification methods.