Three parties, the Congress, the NCP and the Shiv Sena are running a coalition government in Maharashtra since November 2019.
But the parties don’t seem to be talking to each other on the issues facing the state government. Neither are ministers in the government talking to each other. The result is even in the face of the Covid-19 wave, the government is unable to put together a coherent strategy.
Three different ministers in the Maharashtra cabinet presented three different views on how the state would take forward the vaccination process. A senior minister in the cabinet, Nawab Malik, said the Maharashtra government would provide free vaccination to all its people in the state. Malik is from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who is also from the NCP, said the state government had not decided yet how the vaccination programme would be taken forward. He added the government was in the process of deciding. Another minister, Aditya Thackeray who is the son of Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, deleted his tweet and apologised for causing any confusion.
He said the empowered committee would take a call about the vaccination programme. It all happened in a few hours.
Maharashtra has the highest daily number of cases per day. Even when Bharat was reporting about 50000 new cases per day, Maharashtra, together with Kerala, was contributing more than 75 per cent of cases per day.
Amid all this, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray has been found missing in action. Maharashtra reported about 60000 new cases Sunday.
The Union government announced last week everyone above 18 was eligible for vaccination from May 1 onwards. The new vaccination policy also gives states the freedom to procure vaccines for their people.
