Nearly eleven months after the mass vaccination drive against Covid-19 started in Maharashtra, the acting Chief Secretary of Maharashtra Debashis Chakraborty took his first dose of the vaccine on November 2.
Till Chakraborty took the Covaxin shot, this top bureaucrat was ironically among 1.6 Crore adults of Maharashtra who had not taken even one jab of the vaccine. The nationwide vaccination drive was launched on January 16, which was initially open for frontline workers in the first phase. Vaccination was gradually opened for other categories of people in the subsequent months, and Chakraborty had become eligible for the dose on 1 April, as his age is above 45.
According to the media reports, Chakraborty took the first shot of Covaxin at the government-run JJ Hospital. Chakrabarty is learnt to have held senior doctors of the hospital responsible for leaking his personal details.
Chakrabarty took charge as acting chief secretary following the retirement of Sitaram Kunte on November 30.
However, Chakraborty said that it was his personal decision and he had no aversion to the vaccine and he could have taken it at any time. But there was no explanation that how as top bureaucrat and policymaker of Maharashtra he avoided taking the vaccine for so long.
Maharashtra Chief Secretary was compelled to take the vaccine given the upcoming Winter Session of the Maharashtra assembly scheduled to start from December 22. Being the Chief Secretary he will have to attend the assembly session which he can’t without vaccination. Parliamentary affairs minister Anil Parab had said that due to the Omicron threat, the administration had decided to only allow fully vaccinated individuals along with an RT-PCR negative report to enter the Vidhan Bhavan premises. Most govt offices across the country already have implemented the policy of allowing only fully vaccinated staff to attend office.
While so far 45 percent of the adult population of Maharashtra could be fully vaccinated, there can’t be a better example than this reluctant bureaucrat to understand why Uddhav Thackeray led Maha Aghadi government performed so poorly on Covid management.
