If Pakistan attacks India, will the centre leave states to defend themselves?

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New Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal called on the centre to play its part in the vaccination drive and urgently procure enough doses to inoculate people in the national capital and across the country, rather than leaving it to states to try and negotiate separate deals with manufacturers.

“Why isn’t this country buying vaccines? We can’t leave it to individual states. We are at war against COVID-19. If Pakistan attacks India, will the centre leave states to defend themselves? Will Uttar Pradesh buy its own tanks or Delhi its own guns?” the Chief Minister asked.

“Unlike many other countries, India delayed vaccination by six months. The first vaccine was made by Indians in India. We should have been manufacturing and stocking up since then… if we’d done that, we may have prevented some of the deaths in the second wave,” he added.

Under the centre’s new “liberalised” vaccination policy states are now required to independently source 50 per cent of their vaccines. However, documents accessed by NDTV seem to indicate the centre has fixed specific quotas for how many doses the Delhi government can purchase from manufacturers.

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