A public interest litigation has been moved in the Delhi High Court seeking direction to respondents to reduce the price of COVID vaccine for citizens.
The petitioner Rakesh, a social activist, through Advocates AK Dubey and Pawan Kumar states that earlier the price of COVID vaccine at the private hospital was Rs 250 which was reasonable.
The petition states that Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech has fixed the price of Covaxin to the state government at Rs 600 per dose while the same is priced for private hospital at Rs 1200 per dose. Similarly, the Pune-based Serum Institute of India, the manufacturer of Covishield fixed the price at Rs 400 per dose for state government and Rs 600 per dose for private hospitals. The prices are higher in India than in foreign countries.
The Union of India has sent free of cost consignment of anti-coronavirus vaccine about 361.94 lakh doses to countries such as Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, Mauritius, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Bahrain, Oman, Afghanistan, Barbados, Dominica etc. as per the information of Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) of Indian Government. But it is very surprising that the Union of India without securing our citizens has been helping out the citizen of other countries, which is good but the same cannot be done while our citizens are losing their lives, says the plea.
The petition also states that due to high rates of vaccine it is further noticed that black marketing has been started.
It states that many people have been retrenched from their job/service by their company as the companies were not comfortable to run their business and a big population has not been granted the salary and if the salary has been granted then same was less than their previous salary, which they were receiving before the pandemic. The pandemic has also hit rural India and it has recorded its lowest economic growth in the last 10 years.
The petition is scheduled to come up for a hearing on May 17 by the bench of Justice DN Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh.
( With inputs from ANI )
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