Dikhyaa Mohanty 
Senior Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan questioned the Centre’s decision to charge people for the Coronavirus vaccination dosage. The center announced that a person aged 45 with comorbidities or over 60-years can get inoculated at a designated center for Rs 250 per dose in the third phase of the nationwide vaccination drive.
After the decision announced by the Centre, Chavan stated that in Phase-1, the Centre had procured 1.65 crore doses of the vaccine for Rs 210/dose. By talking about the budget this year he stated Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has allocated Rs 35,000 crore for the Covid-19 vaccination drive. In this amount, at the cost of Rs 210/dose, more than 1.50 billion doses can be procured as stated by Chavan.
He further asked that these 1.60 billion doses can help to vaccinate around 75 crores of people in India which in short will cover almost the entire adult population of India to which the budget provision was made. But the charges of this vaccine are completely being levied.
He even said that in countries like the US, the UK, or Canada, citizens are getting free vaccines either by budgetary provisions or through insurance companies. To which he demanded that all the beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (Aayushman Bharat) must be given free Covid-19 vaccines.
He later stated that with such a huge amount allocation of budget and India as the largest supplier of the Covid-19 vaccine, the Modi Government is still charging money for the vaccine which in reality should be free of cost for the common people.
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