The Central Government on Tuesday informed the Delhi High Court that the Centre has taken proactive measures based upon rational and justifiable policy to start vaccinating the citizens depending upon their vulnerability to disease.
The Centre’s response has been submitted before a divisional bench of Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Rekha Palli in relation to the suo-motu cognizance taken, by way of Public Interest Litigation in connection to the issue of providing Covid-19 vaccination to Judges, Lawyers, and the Court staff.
The Centre further informed the court that the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19, which has been established by the Government of India to provide guidance in all aspects of Covid-19 vaccination has considered the requests made in the petition filed by Senior Advocate Pradeep Rai regarding inclusion of lawyers as front line workers for priority vaccination, in continuation to which the NEGVAC have recommended to obtain information regarding total number of lawyers in the country and the number of lawyers who have attained the age of 60 or 45 to 59 with specific co-morbidities.
However, the Centre has submitted in its affidavit,
“it may not be desirable to create a separate class consisting of lawyers and others below 45 years of age and discriminating other similarly situated citizens engaged in other trade, profession or business and working under similar geographic.”
The bench will be further hearing the matter today.