There is a huge pendency of applications of health cards issued under Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (ABPM-JAY) SEHAT scheme as the State Health Agency has failed to approve them on time, citing shortage of manpower.
As per the procedure, online forms for health cards also known as golden cards are submitted through Common Service Centre’s (CSC or Khidmat centre) where the applicant has to submit a copy of verified ration card, Aadhaar details along with biometrics after which the State Health Agency processes and approves it.
However, in Kashmir division, scores of residents have fulfilled the entire criterion but are yet to get their golden cards despite lapse of many months.
In some cases, out of a family, some members have received their cards other are yet to get it, even though all the members have applied on the same date.
“I along with my six members filed an online form for a golden card at CSC centre. My father has received it while the rest of the five members are yet to receive any response. The problem is that there is no communication, neither about the status of our application whether it has been rejected or not nor about its delay,” said Asif Ahmad, a Srinagar resident.
State Health Agency – an executing agency of the project has now sought help from the National Health Agency implementing PM-JAY across India.
“Due to the dearth of manpower at SHA online applications were taking time to get approval. Now we have sought help from the National Health Agency who have both manpower and equipment. We have transferred our bucket of applications to NHA. Now all the backlogs will be cleared within a timeframe of a month or less,” said SMO, PMJAY, Dr Khurshid Ahmad.
He said in some cases the delay was due to the fact that their details in census and Aadhar details were not matching.
In December 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY SEHAT to extend coverage to all residents of Jammu and Kashmir.
AB-PMJAY is a flagship health scheme of the Government of India launched in 2018, and provides a cover of up to Rs 5 lakh per family every year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation.
A senior government official said that all the residents of Jammu and Kashmir would be covered under the scheme irrespective of their socio-economic status.
Medical procedures such as oncology, cardiology, nephrology are included in the scheme the official said.
Beneficiaries can avail services from any of the 24,148 empanelled hospitals across the country under AB-PMJAY’s portability feature.
In February, J&K administration said that they had issued Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (ABPM-JAY) Sehat golden cards to 22 lakh beneficiaries since the launch of the scheme.