Sonia Gandhi Bashes Indian Gov't for Vaccinating 'Less Than a Third of Adult Population' in 9 Months

India has administered 1 billion vaccine doses against COVID-19 with domestic vaccines, a milestone that the ruling BJP government has celebrated with much fanfare. Almost 700 million Indians have received their first of the two doses required and about 291 million have obtained both.

The president of India's main opposition party, Congress, Sonia Gandhi has slammed the Narendra Modi government for the slow pace of vaccination in the nation.

Decrying that the target of 5 million doses a day is too low, Sonia Gandhi stated in a op-ed that in nine months the government has "only been able to fully vaccinate less than a third of our adult population".

"Countries with comparable COVID-19 figures and even those with smaller or poorer economies have performed much better. Even if manufacturers ramp up production rapidly, our vaccination will fail to catch up", Sonia Gandhi stated via the newspaper article.

"The prime minister likes to emphasise that vaccines are free, while conveniently forgetting that they have always been free", she said.

"Not even 10% of our population can afford to pay for vaccines yet the government continues to allocate 25% of vaccines to the private sector. This is unacceptable - resulting in less, not more vaccination", the Congress Party president argued.

Lashing out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government and holding it accountable for the deaths of people, the Congress president said that the nation has not forgotten the heart-rending images of people gasping for breath and of families desperately trying to obtain oxygen and find hospital beds.

"The government is yet to give an accurate count of the number of people who died as a result of its negligence. Callously, the government has yet to provide compensation to bereaved families", she stated.