Saxena asked the Chief Minister to implement the scheme at the earliest for the benefit of poorest of the poor, the LG office said on Sunday.
Delhi Lieutenant Governor (LG) VK Saxena
Delhi Lieutenant Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena has asked Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to implement Ayushman Bharat health scheme in the city at the earliest.
Saxena, upon requests and representations by several disadvantaged groups, that they were not able to avail the benefits of the Ayushman Bharat health scheme of the Centre, because of its non-implementation in Delhi, has recalled the file in this regard invoking Rule 19(5) of Transactions of Business Rules and asked the Chief Minister to implement the scheme at the earliest for the benefit of poorest of the poor, the LG office said on Sunday.
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“The LG while disposing the file outlined that the government, despite having given in principle approval for implementation of Ayushman Bharat scheme way back in 2018 and having announced it even in its budget in 2020, had inexplicably stalled it for merely political reasons, in the process depriving lakhs of poor migrants in the city of health services, under AB-PMJAY (Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana),” it said.
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He also outlined the fact that the “waiting list for issue of ration card to deserving beneficiaries has applicants waiting since 2018, and in the absence of such document, poor sick patients suffering from serious ailments could not avail of health benefits under other available schemes”, it added.
The LG also brought to the fore the state of public health and government hospitals in Delhi, wherein recent observations by the High Court in an ongoing matter and the affidavits submitted by the GNCTD, obviously point towards a “glaring gap”, his office said.
Saxena stressed in his note that “successive Health Ministers since 2018, Satyendra Jain, Manish Sisodia and Saurabh Bhardwaj on as many as six occasions stalled the file on flimsy political pretext, despite the fact that their aim of credit seeking had been addressed right in the beginning, with the Government of India clarifying that Ayushman Bharat could be suffixed with any name that the GNCTD wanted,” it added.
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