Delhi Chief Minister Atishi
The Delhi High Court, hearing a petition on Wednesday regarding the implementation of the Ayushman Bharat scheme in Delhi, raised questions about the Delhi healthcare system. The court said the state of health services in Delhi is not good. Hospitals lack essential and state-of-the-art facilities and even facilities like CT scan are not available to patients. The court asked what was the problem in receiving help from the central government.
This comment by the court was made during the hearing on the BJP MPs’ petition. In reality, the Delhi government has not implemented the Ayushman Bharat scheme of the Government of India in the Union Territory. Against this, seven Delhi MPs have filed a petition in the High Court demanding that the court direct the Delhi government to implement it, so that the people of Delhi can take advantage of it. During the hearing, the Delhi government’s lawyer said that he had not received the copy of the petition, so the court directed the lawyer to provide the copy. The next hearing in the case will be Thursday.
60/40 ratio
BJP MP Bansuri Swaraj attacked the Aam Aadmi Party and said that the ratio of operation under the Ayushman scheme is 60/40 i.e. 60 per cent of the money will be given by the central government and 40 per cent will be given by the state government. However, the Delhi government is not implementing this plan. Quoting the Health Minister’s statement, he said that if this scheme was implemented in Delhi, the Center would have given Rs 47 crore annually to the Delhi government, but due to political issues, the Aam Aadmi Party is not implementing it.
Applicable in 33 states/union territories
The petition filed by BJP MPs claims that 36 states and union territories of the country have implemented it, but the Delhi government is not implementing it. It has also been said in this petition that the Delhi government had talked about implementing it in the 2020-21 budget speech, but later backtracked.
The petition also says that the decision not to implement it in Delhi is a violation of fundamental rights under Article 14 (right to equality) and Article 21 (right to life) of the Constitution.
