Raebareli suffers tremendously with low vaccination rate thanks to Sonia Gandhi’s apathy and Akhilesh’s direct attack on vaccines

In May, interim Congress president Sonia Gandhi had sent three truckloads of firewood to enable the poor to cremate their dead in Raebareli, her parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh. This was when the second wave of Covid-19 was still taking a heavy toll on India and its people. Now that the situation has improved, Sonia Gandhi is nowhere to be found. In fact, her constituency of Raebareli is the district with the lowest vaccination rate as per population in the state of Uttar Pradesh and maybe even the country.

According to a report by News 18, against a projected population of almost 39 lakhs as of date, only 2.12 lakh jabs have been given in Raebareli. Considering that 1.81 lakh of them are first doses, only about 4.6% of the district’s population has got jabbed so far. This is almost half of UP’s average vaccination coverage of about nine per cent of the population so far. Further, only 32,263 people have got the second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine in Raebareli, which effectively means that less than one per cent of the town’s population is fully vaccinated so far.

According to the report, many locals from Raebareli have cited vaccine hesitancy, caused by the remarks of Akhilesh Yadav and local Muslims as the reason for low turnout at vaccination centres. Raebareli MP Sonia Gandhi has taken both doses of the vaccine, Congress said recently, but locals in Raebareli seem unaware of the same. “We did not see her picture of taking the vaccine. Gandhi can issue an appeal to people of Raebareli to take jabs. Maybe it helps,” a student Nitin Mohan told News 18.

Read more: Akhilesh Yadav and Sonia Gandhi are the worst-performing MPs from Uttar Pradesh

Sonia Gandhi is missing in action and seems to have abdicated all responsibility to ensure that her constituents get vaccinated against Covid-19 at the earliest. She should be at the forefront of dispelling all rumours relating to the vaccines and should be leading by example. Ideally, Sonia Gandhi should have got her vaccine doses at Raebareli – so as to boost the confidence of people in the constituency. However, under her leadership – the Congress itself seems preoccupied with mounting an attack on Made in India vaccines.

Earlier, in January, Akhilesh Yadav had insulted the scientists of India by referring to the Covid-19 vaccines being developed and manufactured in India as “BJP vaccines”. When the vaccines were rolled out, Akhilesh had said he would not take the “BJP’s vaccine”. He had remarked, “I will not get the vaccine now. I am telling you about myself. Am I going to trust a vaccine given by the BJP? Oh, get lost. When our government comes, everyone will get the vaccine free.” Such remarks by the Samajwadi Party supremo have played a great role in heightening vaccine hesitancy in Uttar Pradesh.

As reported by TFI recently, both Akhilesh Yadav and Sonia Gandhi are the worst-performing MPs from Uttar Pradesh. Akhilesh Yadav and Sonia Gandhi have a shameful record on all four crucial parliamentary parameters. In terms of attendance, the number of debates attended, the number of questions asked, and the number of private member bills submitted – the two high-value MPs have hardly any achievements or even decent statistics to account for.