Shutting down vaccine PSUs will erode capabilities further, says Congress

The Congress on Friday hit out at the government over the Bharat Immunologicals and Biologicals Corporation Limited (BIBCOL) reportedly facing a "grim future", and said shutting down vaccine PSUs will only erode the country's capabilities further. Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh shared on X a media report which claimed that the BIBCOL factory in Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr, that was at the forefront of India's fight against polio before, hasn't produced a single vaccine since December 2022. "Bharat Immunologicals and Biologicals Corporation (BIBCOL) was set up in the late 1980s, at the personal initiative of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, to make India self-sufficient in the production of oral polio vaccines. It was my good fortune to have been associated with its establishment at Bulandshahr in UP as part of the technology mission on immunisation," Ramesh said in a post on X. But BIBCOL now faces a "grim future in the era of the non-biological PM", h