Covid-19 | Rajasthan to move Supreme Court for global vaccine tenders by Centre

The move comes after a poor response to State’s tenders.

The Congress government in Rajasthan will move the Supreme Court seeking directions to the Centre to float global tenders for procuring COVID-19 vaccines, which could be supplied to the States on the latter bearing the costs. The State halted its vaccination exercise on Thursday in the absence of sufficient number of doses. The global expression of interest (EoI) issued by the Rajasthan government for urgent procurement of vaccines recently did not yield the desired results, as the interested companies quoted much higher rates than the present market prices of vaccines. Nine parties, including those claiming to be authorised agents of AstraZeneca and Sputnik, had sent their quotes. Earlier this month, the West Bengal government had urged the Supreme Court to set aside the Centre's differentiated pricing policy for vaccines and direct it to adopt and implement a uniform policy for procuring 100% doses from manufacturers, which could be equitably distributed to the States and Union Territories for free.