With Covid vaccination underway across the country, Marathi media has resorted to mischief-making yet again. While ABP Majha and its Executive Editor Raji Khandekar were caught peddling fake news by grossly understating the number of vaccine doses supplied to Maharashtra by the Center, almost the entire Marathi media has resorted to putting out misinformation by suggesting that Maharashtra is being discriminated against by PM Modi-led Central Government.

Here’s a comparative study between vaccination carried out by the two western states of Maharashtra and Gujarat that will prove how Marathi media is diverting attention from the Uddhav Thackeray-led MVA (Maha Vikas Aghadi) government’s failures to ensure basic health facilities leading to an alarming situation in Maharashtra.

For a long time, Marathi media has been trying to cover up the failures of the Thackeray government by comparing Maharashtra and Gujarat. They are claiming that although Gujarat has a lesser population than Maharashtra more vaccines are being given to that state.

However, the same Marathi media is conveniently hiding the fact that Uttar Pradesh, despite having a larger population than Maharashtra (and led by a BJP government), has been given lesser doses of vaccines than Maharashtra. It is clear from this that there is no relationship between the population of a state and the number of vaccines being supplied to it.

Maharashtra is one of the few states that has received the highest supply of vaccines since vaccination began and continues to remain on top even today as far as vaccine supply is concerned. The issue here is not just the population but the vaccination campaign.

Today, Maharashtra is ranked as the state that has vaccinated the highest number of people in the country. But even today, the Thackeray government has not given even the first dose of vaccine to 14% of health workers. Additionally, 27% of frontline workers have also not been given the first dose of the vaccine.

Furthermore, only 25% of senior citizens in Maharashtra have been given the first dose of the vaccine. Then the question arises that what exactly did Maharashtra do in the first 2 phases of the vaccination campaign ??

If you want to compare Maharashtra with Gujarat, do it in all respects. Given below are some statistics pertaining to both states.

Vaccination Centers

Maharashtra: – 4696 (Government: – 4064 Private: – 632)

Gujarat: – 4902 (Government: – 4620 Private 282)

Gujarat has more vaccination centers than Maharashtra and significantly government vaccination centers are higher. In other words, Gujarat  government has done more work than the Maharashtra government in building health facilities.

Total vaccination

Maharashtra: 89,60,149

First dose: – 80,84,603

Second dose: – 8,75,546

Gujarat: – 81,53,231

First dose: 72,29,458

Second dose: – 9,23,773

These figures show that Gujarat has a higher vaccination rate than Maharashtra. It also shows that they carried out the campaign in a very planned manner in the first phase of vaccination. Therefore, the number of Gujarati citizens who have received the second dose of vaccine is more than those in Maharashtra.

According to figures provided by Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan in a letter on April 7, it becomes crystal clear that the first phase of vaccination in Maharashtra has not been successful. But it seems to have been successfully carried out in Gujarat. So now the citizens of Gujarat need to get the second dose of vaccine. So it is only natural that they should be given vaccine doses according to their needs.

The Marathi media, which has been busy doing PR for the Thackeray government, is not interested in dwelling into these matters in detail. No matter how much the Marathi media tries to save the Thackeray government by spread hatred against Gujarat that emanates from their hatred for Modi, one cannot change the facts.

It is amply apparent that the MVA government has been concentrating its energies on everything but providing healthcare facilities to its citizens and the Marathi media is only happy to cover up for the faults of the Uddhav Thackeray government by using red herrings like the Central Government favoring BJP-ruled states.

(This article has been compiled using the original Marathi Tweet Thread by Twitteratti Swanand Gangal)

(Featured Image Source: Money Control)

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