On April 1, Rohit*, along with several other students and faculty of IIT Gandhinagar received the first dose of the Covishield vaccine. The vaccination drive, he says, was held on the institute's premises, at the Jasubhai Memorial Auditorium, where he, along with other hostellers and day scholars were vaccinated.
The vaccination drive was subject to a lot of hue and cry because a lot of the people who received the vaccination, including Rohit, were allegedly aged below 45 and were not frontline workers. While the Ministry of Education had written to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with a request to vaccinate the students, staff and faculty of Centrally Funded Technical Institutes, the request was denied by the latter. The MoHFW's denial letter was however sent on April 5, four days after the vaccination drive at IITGN.
At around that time, Rohit says that he took a closer look at the Provisional Certificate for Vaccination that he received after getting the second dose of the vaccine. "The certificate said that I had received the vaccine at a nearby public health centre," he says. EdexLive has also accessed a copy of the certificate that gives the location as a PHC which is located 1.8 kilometres away from the institute. "Until then, the thought of us not being eligible to take the vaccine hadn't hit us," he admits.
However, health department officials have explained that very often when on-site vaccination drives are held, the centre that they are deputed from is sometimes given as the location where they received the jab for administrative purposes.
Rohit adds that the students did not register themselves for the vaccine and instead passed on their details to a few volunteers who got them registered. "Recently, we had an open house at the IIT, where we had raised these questions. However, we received no answers," he says.
But why did the IIT administer the vaccine to its students in the first place? Did it have the requisite permission to do so? We have written an email to the IIT, seeking details on this issue. This copy will be updated once they respond.
*Name changed on request
