'People's lives will be lost, but PM's tax will not be collected' - Rahul Gandhi's attack on vaccine GST issue

- States are getting one dose of Covishield at Rs 315 and one dose of Covacin at Rs 420

New delhi date. Saturday, May 8, 2021

Controversy has now erupted over the price of the corona vaccine and the tax levied on it. Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday wrote a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman seeking waiver of GST on vaccine purchases. Then on Saturday, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi also launched a direct attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the collection of tax on vaccines.

Rahul Gandhi wrote in a tweet that, "People's lives are lost, but PM's tax is not collected". Along with this tweet, he also used the hashtag GST. The government has abolished GST on corona vaccine imported from abroad but GST is still being levied on the purchase of the vaccine within the country. A 5 per cent GST is being levied on corona vaccine from the central government.

States are getting a dose of Serum Institute's Covishield at Rs 300 and Bharat Biotech's Covacin at Rs 400. It is subject to 5 per cent GST separately. Thus, the states are getting a dose of Covishield at Rs 315 and a dose of Covacin at Rs 420. Thus the burden of additional costs on the states is increasing. Because of this, many states are demanding exemption from GST on vaccines. While the central government is getting a single dose of both vaccines at Rs 150.

The use of 3 vaccines is currently approved in India. The first vaccine is Covishield which is being developed by Serum Institute and the second is Covacin which is being developed by India Biotech in collaboration with ICMR. The third vaccine is Sputnik-V, which has been approved for emergency use. It is a Russian vaccine that Dr. Reddy will create the lab. However, the prices of Sputnik-V have not been decided yet.