From the Newsroom: Poonawalla bats for immunity of vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits

In your evening news brief, From The Newsroom, Poonawalla bats for immunity of vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits; Two cases of alleged ‘Love Jihad’ fail to clear the initial legal test and Wistron releases a press statement acknowledging that senior executives failed to take corrective measures.

Vaccine manufacturers need to have protection against all lawsuits for their vaccines especially during a pandemic, Serum Institute of India (SII) Chief Executive Officer Adar Poonawalla has said.

He also said that the vaccine makers are going to propose this to the government while speaking at a virtual panel on the challenges of developing a Covid-19 vaccine at the Carnegie India's Global Technology Summit on Friday.

"We need to have the government indemnify manufacturers, especially vaccine manufacturers, against all lawsuits. In fact, COVAX and other countries have already started talking about that," Poonawalla said.

Of about a dozen cases of alleged 'love jihad' after the new 'anti-conversion' law in Uttar Pradesh, two have failed to clear the initial legal test.

While in one of the cases, the court-ordered release of two arrested Muslim youths after the police failed to produce any evidence against them, in another, the court stayed the arrest of a Muslim man, who had been booked under the new law.

Last week, on the morning of December 12, several contract employees of Wistron ransacked the company's premises, factory equipment and burned the cars of the senior executives.

A preliminary investigation from the labour department of Karnataka state government revealed that there were several lapses from Wistron and its employee hiring agencies. The company failed to resolve the late salary payment issue and discrepancies related to faulty work logging system.

Now, the Taiwanese company's primary client Apple has announced that it has put Wistron on probation and will no longer receive any new business from Apple before they complete corrective actions.

Earlier today, Wistron also released a press statement acknowledging that senior executives failed to take corrective measures to resolve the issues faced by the employees.