Madhya Pradesh High Court: The bench of Mohammad Rafiq, CJ and Atul Sreedharan, J has issued notice to the Madhya Pradesh Government after a PIL was filed before the High Court seeking direction to the Madhya Pradesh Government to initiate the exercise of inviting global tender for the procurement of fixed lot of vaccines for immunizing the entire lot of its residents through a State-level immunization programme.
While it was submitted before the Court that the that the Central Government has adopted a policy according to which it can issue licence in favour of local manufacturers within the State of Madhya Pradesh for manufacturing the vaccine namely Covaxin, the Court listed the matter for further hearing on May 24, 2021.
The petition filed by Sunil Gupta, an elected Member of the State Bar Council, Madhya Pradesh, highlighted that already, a number of States have initiated steps in this regard and have either already floated global tender for the said process or are in the process of issuing one.
It further submits that if the State takes over the responsibility of inviting a global tender and undertakes to procure the entire lot for its unvaccinated (around 85%) population, then the said exercise would be completed within a period of 3-4 months conveniently without much of involvement of the private sector, eliminating the possibilities of the poor or the have-not section of the society been deprived of timely vaccination owing to lack of financial resources with him.
Read all about the petition here:
[SUNIL GUPTA v. THE STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH, WP-9487-2021, order dated 19.05.2021]
Appearances before the Court by:
For Petitioner: Advocate Siddharth Gupta
For Respondents: Advocate General Purushaindra Kaurav, Assistant Solicitor General J. K. Jain and Advocate Vikram Singh
