Prioritise vaccinating those due for second dose of COVID-19 vaccine: Centre to states
New Delhi: The Centre appealed to states on Tuesday to prioritise vaccinating those due for second dose of COVID-19 vaccine and reserve at least 70 per cent of the shots supplied from the central pool for the purpose.
States have also been urged to minimise wastage of vaccine doses, the health ministry said in a statement.
All wastage more than the national average hereafter is to be adjusted from the subsequent allocations to that state or union territory.
The urgent need to address a large number of beneficiaries waiting for second dose of vaccine was stressed in a meeting held by Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan and Dr R S Sharma, the Chairman of Empowered Group on Technology and Data Management to Combat COVID-19, with state officials to review the status of COVID-19 vaccination on Tuesday.
States were urged to "ensure all beneficiaries who have taken the first dose are prioritised for the second doses", the ministry said in the statement.
In this regard, states can reserve at least 70 per cent of the vaccines supplied to them from the Government of India channel for second dose vaccination and the remaining 30 per cent for first dose.
"This however is indicative. States have the liberty to enhance this to as much as 100 per cent. State-wise numbers on CoWIN have been shared with states for their planning purposes.
"The states were asked to undertake awareness campaign for reinforcing the importance of complete vaccination with two doses of the vaccine," the statement said.
Presenting details of states who have ensured high coverage of priority groups (like population aged 45+, frontline workers and healthcare workers) and the others, the Union Health secretary urged states to ensure that priority groups are vaccinated.
States have been informed in a transparent manner in advance about the COVID vaccines being provided to them from Govt of India channel. The visibility for the forthcoming fortnight is conveyed to them in advance to enable better and more effective planning by them, the statement stated.
The next allocation for the period 15-31th May will be conveyed to them on May 14. It was pointed out that states can utilize the information regarding dose allocation for the next 15 days to plan their vaccination sessions.
States were also urged to minimise vaccine wastage, the statement said. While the overall levels have considerably reduced, Union Health Secretary pointed that there were many states which still needed to substantially reduce the wastage.
It was suggested to states and UTs to retrain and reorient vaccinators to ensure judicious usage of the vaccines.
"All wastage more than the national average hereafter is to be adjusted from the subsequent allocations to that state and UT," the statement said.
In this context, it was also pointed out that certain states are able to report a negative wastage because the well-trained health workers can extract maximum doses per vial than what is otherwise generally earmarked.
States were also briefed about procurement from the 'Other than Government of India' (OGoI) channel which has been opened in the Liberalised Phase-III Strategy of Vaccination.
In view of the payments pending from states to the private vaccine manufacturers, the states were advised to constitute a dedicated team at state level of 2 or 3 senior officers to coordinate with vaccine manufacturers on a daily basis and secure State Govt. supplies promptly, the statement said.
This team is to also coordinate with private hospitals to facilitate their procurement thereby maintaining the momentum of the overall vaccination exercise in the State.
The CoWIN platform is also being modified to better reflect the changing needs of the vaccination exercise, the statement said.
The states can download a second dose due report to better plan the completion of vaccination of the target groups., the statement said.
The District Immunization Officer and COVID Vaccination Centre Manager can increase the session capacity according to demand and can also visualise the target group in their upcoming sessions. Beneficiaries without relevant photo ID cards like senior citizens at old-age homes, etc., can also be registered, the ministry said.
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Oath-taking ceremony of first BJP govt in Bengal on May 9; Modi, Shah likely to attend
Kolkata (PTI): The oath-taking ceremony of the first BJP government in West Bengal will be held at Brigade Parade Ground here on May 9, marking the saffron camp’s arrival in power in a state after decades on the political fringes.
The ceremony, scheduled to begin at 10 am, is expected to witness the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP president Nitin Nabin, several Union ministers and chief ministers of BJP- and NDA-ruled states, party sources said.
“The new BJP government will take oath on May 9 at 10 am at Brigade Parade Ground,” state BJP president Samik Bhattacharya announced on Wednesday.
Even as the BJP leadership kept its cards close to the chest on the chief ministerial face, Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari has emerged as a frontrunner in internal discussions after cementing his position as the party’s principal mass leader in Bengal politics.
Adhikari, once among Mamata Banerjee’s closest lieutenants and a key architect of the TMC’s rural expansion in districts such as Purba Medinipur, crossed over to the BJP ahead of the 2021 assembly elections and went on to defeat Banerjee in Nandigram in one of Bengal’s fiercest political battles.
Five years later, he again found himself at the centre of Bengal’s political churn by beating Banerjee in her own turf at Bhabanipur by over 15,000 votes.
Other names for the CM post doing the rounds include Bhattacharya, Union minister Sukanta Majumdar and former Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta, though party insiders indicated that the leadership was inclined towards projecting a “bhumiputra” face rooted in Bengal’s linguistic and cultural ethos.
During the campaign, Shah repeatedly asserted that the BJP’s chief minister in Bengal would be a “son of the soil”, born and educated in the state, in an attempt to blunt the TMC’s sustained attack that the BJP represented an “outsider” political culture alien to Bengal’s social and intellectual traditions.
The BJP bagged 207 of the 294 assembly seats in the recently concluded elections, ending the Trinamool Congress’s uninterrupted 15-year rule and scripting the saffron party’s biggest breakthrough in a state where it once struggled to open its electoral account.
Significantly, the swearing-in ceremony will be held on the 25th day of Baisakh in the Bengali calendar — observed across the state as Rabindra Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore — lending the event a deeper cultural symbolism.
According to BJP leaders, the choice of the date is aimed at embedding the party’s historic rise within Bengal’s cultural imagination and countering the long-standing perception battle over identity and belonging.
Over the last decade, the BJP has steadily attempted to appropriate and reinterpret icons of Bengal’s cultural nationalism — from Tagore and Swami Vivekananda to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and Syama Prasad Mookerjee — as part of a broader ideological effort to expand its emotional and political footprint in the state.
Party insiders said the leadership was also conscious of the need to balance Bengal’s competing regional aspirations while choosing the chief ministerial face, with discussions also taking place around whether greater representation should be accorded to north Bengal, a region where the BJP has made substantial electoral gains over successive elections.
A meeting of the newly elected BJP MLAs has been convened on May 8 evening, party sources said, though the leadership remained tight-lipped over the final choice.
The Brigade Parade Ground ceremony is expected to mark not merely a transfer of power, but a defining moment in Bengal’s political history, the culmination of the BJP’s long ideological and organisational march from the margins to the centre of power in a state that had for decades resisted the saffron surge seen elsewhere in India.
