There is a high-tech facility in Tamil Nadu which, experts say, is capable of producing a billion COVID-19 vaccine doses a year. If used, the Integrated Vaccine Complex (IVC) in Chengalpattu can significantly help close India’s supply gap for COVID-19 vaccines. However, the Union government has not yet utilised this plant to ramp up vaccine production. The 100-acre facility remains idle, and was only used to produce hand sanitisers for a month in 2020. And despite Tamil Nadu’s political leaders crying hoarse for a year to get the Union Health Ministry to operationalise the unit, there has been no movement.
A lot has been written about the state-of-the-art Chengalpattu IVC, and why it remains shut even after a deadly second wave of COVID-19 killed scores of Indians. But this story, which is a part of TNM’s Cooperative Federalism Project, will look at how the Union government handled a state’s political leadership — which united to demand that the vaccine facility be operationalised — with insufficient correspondence, unconvincing answers, and mostly, stony silence.
TNM spoke to several MPs from Tamil Nadu who admitted that they were frustrated with the answers they got from the Union Health Ministry to specific questions they asked in the Parliament on operationalising the Chengalpattu Integrated Vaccine Complex.
Among them, VCK’s Villupuram MP D Ravikumar, has been the most vociferous. On June 30, Ravikumar received a letter from the former Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan’s office, explaining that no private parties came forward to take over the state-of-the-art Chengalpattu facility and manufacture COVID-19 vaccines, when a tender was floated on March 27, 2021, inviting bids for the same.
This tender was published by HLL Lifecare Ltd, a Government of India enterprise of which HLL Biotech Ltd (HBL), which owns the Chengalpattu centre, is a 100% subsidiary. The Health Ministry’s letter said that no bids were received even on the last date of submission (April 14), and that the tender had to be extended to May 21, 2021. The tender expired on May 21 without any bids, the Ministry said.
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However, Ravikumar insists that the Union Health Ministry is serving up an old and redundant story. He explains that the Tamil Nadu government is ready to take over the facility and produce vaccines. On May 26, days after the HLL Lifecare Ltd tender expired, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MK Stalin had written to PM Modi asking the Health Ministry, which controls the Chengalpattu plant, to lease out the facility to the state government.
CM Stalin, in his letter, had proposed that the assets of the IVC be handed over to Tamil Nadu without any “past liabilities and with full operational freedom.” The Chief Minister added that the state will identify a suitable private player and commence vaccine production at the earliest.
However, the ministry ignored his request.
On more than one occasion, CM Stalin has sent reminders to PM Modi on the urgent need to commence vaccine production at the Chengalpattu IVC in the face of vaccine shortage, and promised support from the state on “putting the national asset to its full use.”
“Why does the ministry have no answers to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Stalin's request to lease the facility to the state? Several experts who conducted a site inspection have said that the plant only needs Rs 300 crore to be infused in order to make it fit for producing COVID-19 vaccines, and the state government is ready to take over the facility to produce vaccines,” Ravikumar says.
DMK MP P Wilson, who raised the IVC issue in Parliament, also expressed disappointment with the Union government’s responses to questions raised on the subject. In April 2021, the MP appeared in a Madras High Court suo motu case on COVID-19 preparedness in the country, where he submitted to the Additional Solicitor General appearing for the Union government that the government could make use of the Integrated Vaccines Complex by HLL Biotech at Chengalpattu, BCG Vaccine Laboratory (King Institute, Chennai) and the Pasteur Institute in Coonoor, to manufacture Covishield and Covaxin. On May 10, the Additional Solicitor General submitted to the court that these centres “lacked the technical know-how to manufacture vaccines” and that “the last two times tenders were issued, nobody came forward with a bid.”
On May 13, the MP wrote to the then-Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, explaining that the Union government’s arguments in court were spurious. He then proceeded to offer options on how the government can make use of these centres to ramp up vaccine production in the country.
“One way is to allow the two companies (Serum Institute of India and Bharat Biotech) which hold the license/patents, to utilise these facilities on payment of charges to ramp up production,” he wrote. Wilson also noted that under Section 92 of the Patents Act, 1970, the Union government can compulsorily license a drug during a national emergency, where manufacturers can go ahead and produce a drug or vaccine before they receive patent rights. “The pandemic, which is the worst health crisis that independent India has witnessed, certainly falls under the category of a national emergency,” Wilson wrote.
However, on July 27, Wilson received an inadequate response from the Health Ministry, to an unstarred question (question with only a written response) that he asked in the Rajya Sabha. The response said that the BCG Vaccine Laboratory and Pasteur Institute in Coonoor did not have the infrastructure — a Biosafety Level III facility — to produce COVID-19 vaccines.
Regarding the Chengalpattu IVC, the ministry said, “HLL Lifecare Ltd has invited expressions of interest from vaccine/pharmaceutical companies for use of HBL’s existing facilities at IVC Chengalpattu. Presently, the government is in dialogue with interested companies for utilisation of HBL Chengalpattu,” without clarifying who the “parties” were, or offering a timeline as to when vaccine production will be started in the facility.
PMK’s Anbumani Ramadoss, former Union Health Minister, who played a key role in setting up the IVC in 2008, as part of UPA II Universal Immunisation Program, tells TNM that the facility is BSL3 compliant and was built by meeting the World Health Organisation’s pre-qualification standards.
“The IVC has the capacity to produce seven kinds of vaccines. It is WHO pre-qualified — which means that the vaccines produced here are of export quality. Over the years, the government pumped in more money — a total of Rs 904 crore — but the facility still remains unused for some reason,” he told TNM.
With the onset of the pandemic, Anbumani Ramadoss, too, wrote to the Health Minister, urging the government to operationalise the unit at the earliest. “Vaccinating one billion of India’s population is a herculean task. The good news is that this facility (IVC) can produce COVID-19 vaccines (with minimum investment). And with COVID-19 likely to be around for two to three years in the community...the government should look at producing its own vaccines rather than purchasing from private players, which are several times costlier,” he wrote.
MPs and MLAs from different parties have been lobbying for months to get the IVC up and running. When CM Stalin wrote to PM Modi, leader of opposition Edappadi K Palaniswami too wrote to the Prime Minister, explaining that Chengalpattu IVC was “structurally and functionally ready and awaiting commissioning.” Members of Parliament TR Paarivendhar, S Venkatesan (CPI(M)), DNV Senthilkumar, TK Rangarajan (Rajya Sabha MPs) among others have written letters to the government. But any trace of response from the Union Government eventually hits a dead end. Apart from Dr Harsh Varshadan visiting the complex once in January 2021, and a team of experts from Bharat Biotech inspecting the facility in June, no concrete steps have been initiated to start the plant.
With its stubborn refusal to operationalise existing facilities to ramp up vaccine production, it remains to be seen how the Union government will vaccinate India’s entire adult population by the end of 2021 — a grand promise made by the former Health Minister in May this year.
(With inputs from Thomas Franco, Joint Convenor, People First NGO)
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