PM Modi's 'Political Call' to Open Vaccination for All and Scale Down Bengal Campaign
News 18Monday was a day of big political calls taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he decided to open up vaccination for all adults from May 1 in the private sector and drastically reduced the scale of his own and BJP’s campaign in West Bengal. This prompted Modi to take a political decision on both these fronts on Monday after marathon meetings with his top bureaucratic team on vaccination and the BJP top brass on the West Bengal elections. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has for long been pressing for universal vaccination, along with CMs of the worst-affected states like Maharashtra and Delhi who wanted states be given the flexibility to directly buy vaccines from manufacturers instead of the centralized system presently which has been accused by opposition-led states of political bias. Though the Congress has not much stake in Bengal, Gandhi’s call prompted CM Mamata Banerjee to also announce a scaled down campaign, leaving the BJP politically isolated even as its top leaders Amit Shah and JP Nadda were doing 4-5 big public events daily.