Amid the second wave, India started vaccinating its adult population from ages 18-45 years.
Once vaccinated, a certificate is issued to the citizens and this verifies that they have received either one or both of the doses and is linked with the person's Adhaar number and the date of having received the dose along with the name of the vaccine. While all of this makes it an official document to be used in the future for travel and other purposes, there is one detail in there that has not only left people in India but also immigration officers around the world puzzled. It is the photo of Prime Minister Modi.
Immigration officers are suspecting Indians of fraud due to the photo, reports Vice News.
In one such instance, Deepti Tamhane, who was relocating to London from India, was suspected of fraud by immigration officers at the Frankfurt airport. Her family and she had received the vaccine prior to travelling and received their certificates.
Tamhane was travelling to London in July after much of the second wave had settled, but India was still not out of the Red List. So she took the route from India to Frankfurt after which she would fly to Belgrade and then to London. At the Frankfurt airport, she reached the customer service desk of the airline and presented her documents, of which the most important was the vaccine certificate.
When verifying the vaccine certificate photo with the photo on her passport, the customer service representative got furious at Tamahane and accused her of fraud, and presenting the wrong documents. However, Tamhane explained to her that the photo was of India's Prime Minister and the matter was dismissed with a laugh.
Tamhane shared this experience on her Facebook, and the post went viral and many others spoke up about similar experiences.
A Reddit user named Jhujhar Singh's friend, Nishan faced a similar problem. Nishan was heading to Serbia, to quarantine himself before travelling further. Airport authorities in Serbia stopped him for "wrong" photograph on his vaccine certificate. After explaining the situation, they all had a good laugh and moved on with their lives, reports Vice News.
Dheeraj (name changed), works for a tech company in central Europe. He got vaccinated in India. However, upon his return, he showed his own certificate to a colleague and he told Vice that, "he couldn’t believe that it carried our prime minister’s picture. He called over a dozen other colleagues to have a look and they all had a good laugh. But I guess most Indians wouldn’t find anything wrong with this, given how our hoardings carry photographs of our politicians all the time.”
India is probably the only country where the head of state is using the vaccination drive as an opportunity to promote the party and leader in power.