Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister CN Ashwath Narayan on Wednesday announced a new vaccination drive ‘Marali Collegige’ (Back to College) that proposes to administer COVID-19 vaccine jabs to all college-going students before the end of July. On the sidelines of the launch of 2,500 smart class rooms and free distribution of tablet PCs to 1.55 lakh college students across the state, Ashwath Narayan who is also chairman of the state COVID-19 Task Force, told reporters that the primary concern of the state government has always been providing a safe environment to students and their parents to resume functioning of colleges in the state.

"Hence, we have come up with a plan after much deliberations with academic as well as health experts that the ongoing vaccination drive will have to be accelerated, focusing on vaccinating teaching as well as all staff who work in educational institutions. Besides this, every student must be inoculated before the second or third week of July, so that we can give a go ahead signal to institutions to resume their operations soon," said the Deputy Chief Minister who holds the Higher Education portfolio.

He said that the state government will soon launch the 'Marali Collegige (Back to College)' drive to speed up the ongoing vaccination drive. The Deputy Chief Minister said that the 13-member expert committee headed by noted cardiac surgeon, Dr Devi Prasad Shetty too, has recommended staggered reopening of institutions and strongly recommended, speeding up the ongoing vaccination drive focusing on students, teachers and allied staff members of every educational institution.

He said that vaccination for all those aged over 18 in the state is already underway on a priority basis. Degree, post graduation, diploma and engineering students of Karnataka, on Wednesday, staged protests across the states demanding the cancellation of exams for odd semesters. In addition to this, the students had also demanded the government to provide vaccination before conducting classes offline.