The Congress’s Karnataka unit on Friday announced that the party’s MPs, MLAs and MLCs would allocate Rs 100 crore from their local area development funds to procure vaccines.

“The government has miserably failed to protect the people and vaccinate them. Hence, the MPs, MLAs and MLCs of the Congress, who are 95 in number, have decided to donate at least Rs 1 crore each to procure vaccines,” former chief minister Siddaramaiah, who is also the Congress legislative party leader, said at a news conference here.

According to him, a total of Rs 100 crore will be given by the Congress leaders of Karnataka for the purpose.

State Congress chief D.K. Shivakumar, who accompanied Siddaramaiah, said the Congress parliamentarians and legislators were ready to stop development projects in their areas. “It is our bounden duty to save lives rather than carry out development works,” he added.

He said the party would write to chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa to utilise their funds for vaccine procurement.

Later in a statement, the state Congress unit said it needed two small permissions, one from the central government and another from the state government, to allow the diversion of LAD funds for vaccine procurement.

“My appeal to the BJP is to not let politics come in the way and in the spirit of Atmanirbhar Bharat (and) allow the Congress to directly procure and administer vaccines,” it quoted Shivakumar as saying.

Currently, vaccine procurement rules in India allow central and state governments, hospitals and industries to directly procure vaccines, the party said.

“I appeal to the Yediyurappa government to please allow us to use the MLA/MLC funds to procure vaccines directly in a transparent manner because the Modi and Yediyurappa governments are failing to do so for months now,” the Congress quoted Shivakumar as saying. PTI