After being under a lot of scrutiny for reportedly organising a vaccination camp for students and staff before the government had begun vaccination for those under 45 years of age, IIT Gandhinagar has now stated that they did it only for a few people who wrote doing social service in the villages around campus.
Responding to an RTI reply, the authorities of IIT Gandhinagar said that between March and April, only 82 of its residents under 45 were vaccinated. While a number of students had claimed that around 900 people were vaccinated at a drive that was held on campus, the institute says that the vaccination drive was held in a Public Health Centre nearby.
In their reply, the IIT maintains that only 39 students, 12 teachers, 25 non-teaching staff and six other residents were vaccinated because they were frontline workers. It also says that they were part of the "lIT Gandhinagar special volunteer force (that) helped the Institute community and residents of neighbouring villages." It also maintains that the "vaccination drive was not supervised by the Institute."
"Please note that around 80 members of IITGN community registered themselves to be part of Special Volunteer Force created by the Institute, to act as Corona essential workers," says the institute in another RTI reply. All this information were obtained through three different RTIs filed by an applicant called Ram Kumar from Chennai. However, it did not provide any details of the people who received the jabs at that time. "Since llT Gandhinagar only facilitated the vaccination by the local health authority, maintaining the record of beneficiaries by llT Gandhinagar was not necessary and hence was not done," it added.
