Special Reports Tamil Nadu

No vote, No vaccine? Netizens, leaders allege DMK is taking revenge on Kongu region by not vaccinating its people

May 22, 2021
The Commune

On Friday (May 21), Coimbatore saw 3243 new cases of Wuhan virus getting reported, next only to Chennai which saw 5913 new infections.  The district stands second with 29345 active cases while Chennai tops the list with 48782 active cases.

On the other hand, the district fares extremely poor in terms of vaccination. Only 172 doses were administered on Friday. From May 15 to May 21, a total of just 4714 doses were administered in the entire district. In the same period, 22453 cases of Wuhan virus were reported.

It is not that the state does not have any vaccines with it. As of May 18, Tamil Nadu had a total of 13,63,494 doses of vaccines in its kitty. It had received 9,62,000 doses on May 16 from the Union Government.

In light of this, leaders from opposition parties and the people have alleged that the DMK is discriminating Kongu region in vaccination.

Coimbatore South MLA Vanathi Srinivasan said that the western belt is being neglected with regards to vaccination. She said that there has been negligible vaccination in the district for the past two days. She has urged the Health Minister to take action immediately.

BJP MLA candidate from Ooty expressed strong condemnation towards the DMK government for discriminating the people of Nilgiris and Coimbatore. He said that in Coonoor, no vaccines are being administered for the past three days. “Everyday I’m following up with GH personnel and they give me the same response that no vaccines have been supplied. Extremely poor distribution plan by the state.”, Bhojaran said.

Prof. P. Kanagasabapathi, the State Vice President of BJP Tamil Nadu has said that despite repeated appeals, there has been no respite for Coimbatore people and that there has been no vaccination since yesterday (May 20). He has written a letter to Chief Minister MK Stalin to intervene and address the issue at the earliest. In his letter he stated that the COVID positivity rate of Coimbatore is higher than that of Chennai and that hospitals are turning away thousands of people wanting to get vaccinated citing they don’t have vaccine stock. He has asked the Chief Minister to allocate sufficient vaccines to the district.

AIADMK spokesperson Kovai Sathyan  said that there is no logic or mathematical model that is being followed by the present Tamim Nadu government. “They are just randomly distributing the vaccines in an arbitrary manner”, he said.

“Just because they got wiped out in the region, it seems that the DMK is purposefully not rolling out beneficial schemes for the public of the region as they don’t want the MLAs of the region to take the credit.” Kovai Sathyan said.

BJP Spokesperson SG Suryah lashed out Stalin-led government and called it a cruel, blatant injustice and discrimination being meted out to the people of Coimbatore. “I don’t know if it is sheer incompetence and mis-governance of the present state government or whether they are doing it purposefully as they got wiped out in all 10 constituencies of Coimbatore. A government has to be a government for all. Are Coimbatore people not Tamilians?”, Suryah said speaking to The Commune.

BJP Tamil Nadu Vice President K. Annamalai also questioned the government over the poor vaccination roll out for Coimbatore. He said that vaccination in the Kongu belt has been on the decline since May 10.

“Total vaccination done in the state on May 19 was 36,199. Total Vaccination in the 5 districts of western region (Coimbatore, Erode, Nilgiris, Salem, and Tirupur) is just 2244. This is just 6% of the total vaccination done for the state on that day. It clearly shows that the region is being neglected.”, he said.

“Is this political pay back for not electing DMK representatives here? Or is it sheer political and administrative mis-management?”, Annamalai asked.

It is to be noted that Tamil Nadu is dealing with a dual problem of vaccine wastage and vaccine hesitancy. Thanks to Tamil news channels, irresponsible politicians like VCK chief Thol. Thirumavalavan and self-proclaimed experts on everything under the sun like Sumanth C Raman, vaccine hesitancy has been high in the state after they raised questions about the safety of vaccines following Actor Vivekh’s death. While Actor Vivekh died of heart attack, the rhetoric peddled had led to unwarranted fears among common people. It needs to be mentioned that the same people who spread fear have got themselves vaccinated.

On top of this, netizens and leaders allege that political preferences of people seem to be having a role in the vaccine distribution by the DMK government. The hashtag #DontBoycottCoimbatore is trending on Twitter.

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