The centre was again in a tight spot when the Supreme Court of India pointed out different flaws in the vaccination and vaccine procurement policy, including the need of making CoWin registration mandatory.

On the Covid-19 vaccine procurement policy, the Supreme Court posed searching questions to the Centre, on Monday. The Apex Court also posed questions on the need for a mandatory registration on the CoWIN app for people to get vaccinated without keeping in mind the real ‘digital India’ situation, observing that the policymakers must have an ear to the ground.
A special bench of Justices D Y Chandrachud, L N Rao and S Ravindrabhat raised the issue of digital divide faced by India. It said that since the Centre has made CoWIN registration mandatory for vaccination, how is it going to address the issue of the digital divide facing the country.

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The bench sought to know from Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, and asked, “You keep on saying the situation is dynamic but policy makers must have their ears on ground. You keep on saying digital India, digital India but the situation is actually different in rural areas. How will an illiterate labourer, from Jharkhand get registered in Rajasthan? Tell us how you will address this digital divide.”

It also said, “You must smell the coffee and see what is happening across the country. You must know the ground situation and change the policy accordingly. If we had to do it, we would have done it 15-20 days back”.

On this, Mehta replied that registration is mandatory as a person needs to be traced for a second dose and as far as rural areas there are community centres where a person can get registered for vaccination.

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The bench further questioned Mehta whether the government thinks that this process is viable and asked him to place the policy document on record.

The Apex court was hearing a suo motu case on management of Covid19 situation in the country.

At the outset, the Supreme Court asked the Centre about the vaccine procurement policy of the Centre. In doing so, it referred to the fact that states like Punjab and Delhi are in the process of issuing global tenders to procure foreign vaccines for COVID-19.
The Apex court bench said that even Municipal Corporation like Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has received bids.

The bench further said, “Is this the policy of the central government that the state or municipal corporation can procure the vaccine or the Union Government is going to procure for them like a nodal agency? We want clarity on this and rationale behind this policy.”

Centre said that the entire eligible population would be vaccinated by the end of 2021. The law officer said that the government is in talks with companies like Pfizer and if it succeeds then timeline for completing the vaccination would change.

For saving lives of Covid19 patients and to facilitate a public health response to the pandemic, the Apex court had constituted a 12-member National Task Force to formulate a methodology for the scientific allocation of Oxygen to states and UTs.