The Mamata Banerjee government on Friday urged the Supreme Court to direct the Centre to provide free vaccines to all citizens of the country as a matter of fundamental right and in keeping with the policy of universal immunisation that has been in vogue in India for over 73 years.

The Bengal government alleged the Centre was shirking its constitutional duties at a time the country was grappling with the unprecedented crisis brought on by the epidemic.

In an application, the state government questioned the differential vaccine price policy adopted by the Centre that has allowed private players such as the Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech to determine prices.

The application is expected to come up for hearing on May 10.

“The immediate singular objective of the Government of India ought to be to take drastic steps to achieve universal coverage at the earliest. The current differential pricing mechanism will result in low coverage of the population. Vaccines must be considered as a ‘public good’ and therefore should be free of cost for the public at the time of an unprecedented crisis and cannot be reduced to a market commodity. In fact, western countries are vaccinating their populations free of cost,” the Bengal government said.

“It must be remembered that Covid-19 is an inter-state communicable disease and therefore the universality of vaccine coverage must be the Government of India’s responsibility….

“The state government would like to recommend that the time-tested immunisation programmes in operation for the last 73 years that deliver universal coverage should function as a vaccination model at the time of this pandemic. This model envisages the Government of India providing the vaccines to the states to cover every citizen.”