Union minister Pralhad Joshi hit out at senior Congress leader and former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah over his remarks on India administering over one billion doses of the vaccine against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

Siddaramaiah, who is the leader of opposition in the Karnataka assembly, questioned on Friday why leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were celebrating the milestone of over a billion doses when only 21% of India’s population was fully vaccinated.

In a series of tweets, Siddaramaiah warned that India is still in a position of danger. “Only 290 million people have got two doses and 420 million have got one dose, leaving 620 million without any single dose of vaccine,” the former Karnataka CM also said.

Also Read| Siddaramaiah says only 21% people fully inoculated, questions celebrations

Union minister Pralhad Joshi, while speaking to reporters on Saturday, stated that 31% of the population was fully vaccinated, adding, of the seven billion vaccines administered globally, India alone gave over one billion vaccines.

“Are you proud of India or not, I am asking Siddaramaiah?” Joshi was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

The Union minister pointed out that in several developed countries, people were not coming forward to get inoculated against Covid-19. “However, here our leaders and medical fraternity created awareness among people because of which people are coming and taking vaccines. Indigenous manufacturing of the vaccines is also a big achievement,” Joshi further said.

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On October 21, India achieved a record feat of over a billion vaccinations, the second country after China to cross this figure. It took nine months for the Modi government to reach this landmark achievement.

Till now, authorities have administered a total of 1,013,028,411 vaccine doses of which 712,413,356 beneficiaries have received the first dose and the remaining 300,615,055 have received both doses. More than 6.84 million doses were given in the last 24 hours.