Many in the Valley are smelling political discrimination in the Jammu and Kashmir government’s vaccine distribution policy as BJP stronghold Jammu city has clocked nearly 100 per cent inoculation of the 45-plus population with the first dose while Srinagar city remains starved at 35 per cent.

While Jammu is the winter capital of the fledgling Union Territory, Srinagar is the summer capital.

The cries of bias have only got shriller after the administration of Lt Governor Manoj Sinha failed to administer even a single jab in Srinagar city in the past four days while Jammu city fared better with 14,714 jabs.

According to official figures on Sunday, Jammu had administered the first dose of anti-Covid vaccine to 5,63,880 people in the above-45 category, or 99.39 per cent of the total beneficiaries in this group.

In Srinagar, the number stood at 1,97,571, or 35.52 per cent. In the past four days, Kashmir has got only 504 jabs while the Jammu region, which has 10 districts including Jammu city, received 42,409.

For the Jammu region as a whole, the percentage of the above-45 population inoculated with the first dose is 85.56. The Kashmir Valley region has clocked 61.15 per cent.

Many in Kashmir see the skewed statistics as part of the Centre’s alleged anti-Valley policies. The government has attributed the low numbers to initial vaccine hesitancy in Kashmir.

“We care for the people of all regions as much as we care for ourselves, but prioritising one region and ignoring the other amidst the deadly pandemic is regrettable,” former minister Imran Raza Ansari, one of the few Valley politicians believed to be close to the Centre, said in a statement.

People’s Democratic Party spokesman Najmus Saqib alleged that Kashmir was being ignored on all fronts, vaccination being no exception.

“Plus, you have an administration in place here which is directly run by the Centre, by the Union home ministry, which had been busy conducting the Bengal polls. How do you expect them to have any time for our state?” the PDP leader said.

The director-general of the family welfare department, Dr Saleem-ur-Rahman, rubbished the claims of politics over vaccine distribution.

“We are facing some delay in vaccine (availability) for the past one week. Before that, vaccines had been available in plenty, but people (in the Valley) were not coming initially. In Jammu, it (vaccination) remained steady,” Rahman told The Telegraph.

“In Shopian (in the Valley), we have covered (nearly) 100 per cent. In the Valley (on the whole), we made repeated pleas to people to come for vaccines. But they were reluctant…. In the last 20 days, we have witnessed a massive demand in Kashmir, so much so that we administered 50,000 jabs in a day. In Jammu, we never touched that number in any day.”