JAIPUR: The Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan is all set to hold an investigation to look into the bunglings of the previous government's flagship program, Bhamashah Yojna.
Speaking in the assembly during the Budget debate, CM Gehlot said that they have been getting complaints of various irregularities and corruption in the project. He then announced that a ministerial committee will be formed to investigate them.
"Huge corruption is happening in the scheme", he said citing examples that if 1000 operations are done, 900 are performed only in one districts and remaining100 only in the rest of the state. "Many such complaints have been recieved and we will probe it", he added.
Previously, durinh his second tenure as Rajasthan Chief Minister, Gehlot had implemented free medicine scheme in government hospitals. But in 2013, when Vasundhara Raje became CM, she brought Bhamashah Yojana as her government's flagship program.
The government is spending more than Rs 1000 crores annually on the Bhamashah Health Insurance Scheme. But in regards to alleged corruption and irregularities in the scheme, it came to light that some private hospitals have rigged the scheme by going against the rules. It was revealed that these hospitals were earning illegally on the Bhamashah card of the patients.
There are reports that false claims have already been raised on the scheme earlier in the BJP government as well. After the investigation, several hospitals were banned and taken out of the plan. Surprisingly, private hospitals have been found to have deposited a small per cent of the money in the form of penalties and are back in the scheme.
It has also been pointed out that since December 2017, action has been taken to de-panel nearly 110 private hospitals from this plan. About 90 of them re-appealed to the higher level and nearly 70 of were admitted into the plan again. It was found that in some cases, the private hospitals were added after paying penalties twice.
During random checks of hospitals, about 20 to 30 percent of them were found to have irregularities. This means that there is a possibility of fake payments of about 200 to 300 crore rupees annually in the entire scheme
Reacting at Gehlot's announcement state BJP's Vice President Gyandev Ahjua said: " The investigation should be done. The corruption has nothing to do with the previous government but with hospitals. They should look into the matter and correct it"