Patna: Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Chopra and Akshay Kumar these are the names of residents of a non-descript rural area of an impoverished south Bihar district.
If the state health department is to be believed, they are all villagers who have been “tested and vaccinated” for COVID-19 in Karpi panchayat of Arwal district.
“This embarrassing matter came to our notice about 20 days ago when the civil surgeon was inspecting the records. The two data operators concerned have been sacked and FIRs lodged against them,” said Arwal’s District Magistrate J Priyadarshini.
“Instructions have been issued to closely examine records of other parts of the district. If more such anomalies come to the fore, more action shall follow since lapses of this kind reduce the drive against the pandemic to a farce,” she added.
Notorious for maintaining irreconcilable records, one of the most famous example of which was cattle having been shown transported on scooters during the fodder scam of the 1990s, Bihar has lately made news for having the names of actors Sunny Leonne and Emraan Hashmi among job aspirants and college students.
The latest incident has given fresh ammunition to the opposition against the Nitish Kumar government in the state.
Leader of the opposition Tejashwi Yadav shared a screenshot, purportedly of the list wherein Modi, Shah, Gandhi and Chopra have been shown to be inoculated thrice.
“We can see why the health department in Bihar is perceived to be corrupt and incompetent,” Yadav tweeted in an oblique reference to the NITI Aayog’s recent report, which has put the state at the bottom in the country on various parameters, though it has been vehemently contested by the ruling dispensation.
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