New Delhi: Rajasthan government has told the high court that it has begun the process of vaccinating Pakistani Hindu migrants living in the state. The migrants had earlier written to the prime minister, requesting to be vaccinated after having been turned away from centres as they did not have an Aadhaar card.Rajasthan has a large population of Pakistani migrants. Hindus are a religious minority in Pakistan, and faced with persecution, many have fled into Rajasthan over the years.LiveLaw has reported that the Ashok Gehlot government filed an affidavit before a division bench of Chief Justice Indrajit Mahanty and Justice Vinit Kumar Mathur after the court asked the government to prepare a plan to vaccinate the migrants.A different bench (of Justices Vijay Bishnoi and Rameshwar Vyas) had noted that the state government and district administration should chalk out a plan following the Union government’s standard operating procedure for vaccination of people who do not have prescribed identity cards.While the Union health ministry had earlier said that the Aadhaar itself was not mandatory for the vaccine, it later released fresh guidelines saying that it was the “preferred” mode of verification. However, there have been several reports on vaccination centres turning down people do did not have Aadhaar cards.The bench had rapped the government for not treating the migrants on par with citizens for vaccination.Rajasthan’s affidavit noting that vaccination of Hindu migrants from Pakistan has begun was reportedly filed on June 10 or 11. The state government, through its counsel, has promised another affidavit providing details of those who have received vaccination.New Indian Express had in a May 27 report quoted a Sindh migrant living in Jodhpur for the past 12 years as having said that he was turned back when he went to a vaccination centre with his family.Activist Ashok Suthar had told the newspaper, “Coronavirus is spreading rapidly in these areas and in 21 such ghettos 50 people have been found for the positive while 1500 people have an influenza-like illness but they have never had any medical investigation done.”Most Pakistani Hindu migrants in Rajasthan are awaiting Indian citizenship, something which was part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pre-2019-poll promise.At the start of India’s vaccination drive, tech experts and social welfare activists had pointed out the ills of connecting Aadhaar to vaccination, citing examples of earlier welfare schemes.“Linking welfare schemes to Aadhaar and its biometric verification system has caused mass exclusions, and has even led to starvation deaths,” a statement by the Internet Freedom Foundation had noted.
