Gujarat has raised the highest amount of claims under the Ayushman Bharat scheme at nearly Rs 862 crore. Jammu & Kashmir, while being under President’s Rule, has surprised the Centre with more than 20,000 people having availed themselves of the scheme’s benefits so far while nearly 13 lakh e-cards are being issued to people in the insurgency-hit state. 

Senior officials monitoring the scheme told ET that Gujarat has in fact emerged as the model state as it has merged two of its existing state health schemes, which had been launched when Narendra Modi was the state’s chief minister, with the Ayushman Bharat Yojana. This has raised the level of beneficiary families covered in the state to almost 8 million now. 

The state has also added 400 more packages to the existing Ayushman Bharat package list of about 1,400-odd packages, to make it 1,805 packages in all to cover more illnesses. This is said to have led to close to 0.5 million people in the state using the sc ..