People from two neighbouring villages in Amroha brawled with each other at a Covid vaccination camp on Wednesday, bringing into focus the shortage of doses and mismanagement blighting the vaccination campaign in Uttar Pradesh.

Videos circulating on social media show some 300 men and women punching and kicking one another and pulling each other by the hair.

Police said the trouble began when villagers from Lalu Nangla claimed the special one-day camp, held at the village primary school, was meant exclusively for their village and attacked vaccine seekers from adjacent Bagarpur Kalan.

The scuffle comes weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s running of the poll-bound state that had earlier in the summer epitomised India’s mismanagement of the Covid second wave, courtesy the pictures of bodies floating down the Ganga or buried on riverbanks.

A state government official in Lucknow said a chronic shortage of doses as well as healthcare workers to administer them had created widespread anger across the state, and Wednesday’s violence was just waiting to happen.

“There’s tremendous pressure on us to intensify vaccination across the state. There were 91 booths in Amroha district on Wednesday but we didn’t have enough doctors and nurses to vaccinate all those who had turned up at the booths,” he said. “Hundreds returned home in the evening without receiving the jab. Obviously, they would be angry and restless.”

He added: “The people who had reached that particular booth in Amroha outnumbered the available vaccines. While a crowd had gathered there since 9am, there were only two health workers to administer the vaccine. We will organise more counters there next week.”

Officials said the camp had only 200 doses. By afternoon, only a few doses were left but the crowd was still growing.

“Some people in both villages are still agitated. Elders gathered at the same primary school today and resolved to pacify the people of their respective villages,” a Bagarpur Kalan resident told reporters on Thursday.

Umar Farooq, the doctor in charge of the local community health centre, 10km away, said: “The villagers fought with each other over some issue. We didn’t register a police complaint because the health officials there were not involved (attacked).”

Local station house officer Sunil Kumar said: “We learnt about the incident from a video clip. Some Lalu Nangla residents attacked people from Bagarpur Kalan first and left a youth injured. We have asked the injured person to submit a complaint with us.”