For cheap publicity and petty gains, Congress is leading a smear campaign against SII and Bharat Biotech

Congress, the grand old party of the country is back to doing what it does best, fudging the numbers and chalking up false statistics to suit its agenda to derail the mass vaccination campaign initiated by the central government.

To sow seeds of vaccine hesitancy, Congress general secretary in charge of media, Randeep Singh Surjewala on Sunday tried to push the allegation of profiteering against the two vaccine manufacturing companies by asserting that as per Congress’s estimates, the total profits for Adar Poonawalla led Serum Institute of India will be as much as Rs. 35,350 crore, while that for Dr Krishna Ella led Bharat Biotech will be as much as Rs. 75,750 crore.

In nutshell, Congress claimed that the two companies will be earning a profit of Rs. 1,11,100 crore.

The Congress party has assumed that cost of production for both the vaccines is Rs. 150, and based on that, they have estimated profit of Rs. 250 and Rs. 450 for SII and Rs. 450 and Rs.1050 for Bharat Biotech from states and private sector respectively. Firstly, the Congress needs to understand that it is a vaccine being manufactured, not some ‘Mattel’s hot wheel toy’ whose production cost, some armchair ‘literature graduate’ of the party’s youth wing can churn out from the comfort of party offices.

Furthermore, the entire positing of Congress’s hypothesis is based on the fact that 101 crore adults under the age of 45 will be inoculated and thus the profit will be incurred. However, the government has only opened the vaccination for those above 18 and currently, the population below 18, comes down to 50 crores. Thus, the calculation fails in the first scrutiny itself.

Moreover, the claims of SII and BB reaping a profit of Rs 1,11,100 crore is four times that of Reliance Industries which clocked Rs 30,000 crore as profit in the year 2019-20. Thus, the claim in itself is laughable and ludicrous, at best.

As for the alleged discrepancy in the price — quoted as saying by CNBC TV18, Adar Poonawalla has already clarified that ₹150 per dose was for the earlier contracts which were fixed without even knowing if the vaccine will work and was a “risk-sharing” price that was agreed for a limited amount of quantities.

Now, that the vaccine works and the biggest manufacturer in the world has to scale up the operations to cater to the demand of the country as well as foreign nations, the price was always going to be increased. It’s simple maths and a basic understanding of how a business runs.

Congress conveniently sidestepped the crucial point that SII has to pay 50 per cent royalty to AstraZeneca for the vaccine and according to media reports, the Adar Poonawalla led company was sustaining a considerable loss on each dose that was supplied to the government in their initial deal.

Even for argument’s sake, if we take Congress’s version that vaccines have been differentially priced for centre and state, isn’t that the common sense that the vaccine centre procures would be granted to the states only?

There is no separate population at the centre that the Modi government will be vaccinating. The entire central quota of 50% in practice is state quota only. Eventually, it is the states that will get the centre’s quota and there is no compulsion to buy vaccine from the manufacturers — the states can only rely on the centre quota, if they don’t want to splurge on public’s health.

Read more: Defaming the giver of vaccines: Adar Poonawalla is the new Ambani and Adani for opposition and media

Reported earlier by TFI, Congress’s spoon-fed scion, Rahul Gandhi had also took to Twitter to attach SII’s vaccine rates for the state governments and private hospitals and labelled Adar Poonawalla as ‘Modi’s friend.

The vaccine manufacturing process on a scale is a financially draining business and by targeting and accusing SII and BB of profiteering, the opposition and in specific, Congress is only trying to prolong the second wave and politicise the issue for some mealy electoral gains.