Despite facing criticism last month from West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee over overstepping its mandate in sending out Ayushman Bharat entitlement letters by bypassing state authorities, the Narendra Modi government has repeated the act, this time in Rajasthan.
While Rajasthan’s former BJP government had last year signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Centre for rolling out the scheme, the western state hasn’t implemented the Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY), as per government’s own admission in Parliament in December last year.
In reply to a starred question Number 172 on Dec 21 on states that hadn’t implemented the Ayushman Bharat scheme as of then, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare JP Nadda said in Parliament, “The states of Odisha, Telangana and UT of Delhi have not yet signed MoU for implementation of PMJAY.”