The Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, today hit back at the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government saying that it wants to hide its failures by accusing the Centre. Addressing a virtual conference, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said that the AAP government and the Congress are trying to create confusion about the vaccine. “Till yesterday, around 6.63 crore vaccines were exported. Questions were raised as to why vaccines were sent out of the country. These vaccines have been sent in two categories. Only 1 crore vaccines have been sent as aid. More than 5 crore vaccines have been sent as a liability. The two vaccine manufacturing companies had imported raw materials from outside the country. At this time, they signed an agreement that when this vaccine will be ready, some of that vaccine will be given to those countries as well. This is a commercial liability,” said Patra.

Patra added that India has given 78.5 lakh vaccines to the neighbouring 7 nations while 2 lakh doses have been given to the UN Peacekeeping force because more than 6,000 soldiers of our country are working for peacekeeping in different countries.

Patra also hit out at the Delhi government after it shared the Bharat Biotech letter alleging denial of additional vaccine supply. He said that even the Bharat Biotech letter says that the AAP government has expressed interest to procure Covaxin but has neither placed an order nor made any advance payment.

He said that this is no time to do politics and India should stand united in this pandemic. Rubbishing Manish Sisodia’s claim that Delhi was given only 3.5 lakh vaccines by the Central government, Patra shared official data showing that Delhi has been given around 8 lakh vaccines by yesterday.

Notably, the Delhi government of the Aam Aadmi Party came down heavily on the central government today after Bharat Biotech refused to supply additional vaccines to Delhi. “We had demanded 1.34 crore doses of vaccines – 67 lakhs each of Covaxin and Covishield. Bharat Biotech wrote to us yesterday that they can’t provide vaccines to us,” said Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, quoting Bharat Biotech’s letter which reads ‘we are making dispatches as per directives of concerned Government officials’.

The Aam Aadmi Party shared Bharat Biotech’s letter on its Twitter handle. The letter reads, “There has been an unprecedented demand for our vaccine and in spite of increasing production every month, we are unable to keep up with the demand. Further, we are making dispatches as per the directives of the concerned Govt. officials. We therefore sincerely regret that we cannot make any additional supplies as required by you.”

“I don’t know how much is being supplied to other states but they’ve written to us that they can’t provide it to Delhi because they have to supply as per Central Government,” claimed the Delhi Deputy chief minister.

Sisodia claimed that Delhi’s reserve stock of vaccine has been exhausted. “The centres administering Covishield vaccines are functioning but we have had to close the centres administering Covaxin. So, we have had to close down more than 100 centres across 17 schools,” said Manish Sisodia.

Sisodia said that the Centre should act as the government of a country and must carry out their responsibility and stop all vaccine exports.

He reiterated his stand that exporting 6.6 crore doses of vaccine was the biggest mistake of the Central government.

Yesterday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wrote to PM Narendra Modi urging him to use Patent Law to acquire the vaccine formula from Bharat Biotech & Serum Institute of India. He urged the Centre to share the formula with all qualified manufacturers so that the manufacturing of vaccines can be ramped up.