Nearly 750,000 beneficiaries of the Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) are registered under a single mobile number – 9999999999, The Indian Express reported, citing the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).
A performance audit report on the Centre’s flagship scheme for health insurance for poor people was placed in the Lok Sabha on Monday. The report showed that linking 749,820 beneficiaries to a single mobile number was not an isolated anomaly.
More than 139,000 beneficiaries have been linked to the number 8888888888, while over 96,000 have been linked to 9000000000.
At least 20 other mobile numbers have 10,000 to 50,000 beneficiaries linked to them, the CAG report stated.
The report further pointed out that mobile numbers are important as those availing of the scheme could use them if they lose their identification cards.
The CAG said in its report that the National Health Authority (NHA) has agreed to its observations. It said that the anomalies will be taken care of after the Beneficiary Identification System (BIS) 2.0 is launched for the health insurance scheme.
“…The BIS 2.0 system has been configured so that more than a certain number of families cannot use the same mobile number,” the health authority was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.
“This shall arrest the prevalence of entering ‘random numbers’ which constitute the overwhelming cases of mobile number inconsistency,” he added.
The central government’s flagship public insurance scheme was launched on September 23, 2018, to achieve universal health coverage, as the National Health Policy of 2017 recommended.
The scheme was rolled out in rural and urban areas based on deprivation and occupational criteria of the SECC 2011 for at least 107.4 million families, or about 500 million people, to “reduce the out-of-pocket expenditure of the poor and vulnerable population.”