Patna, February 26 The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has highlighted irregularities in the implementation of the Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (PMJAY) in Bihar, stating that at least 595 villages in the state were deprived of the scheme's intended benefits.
The CAG's report (No. 4 of 2025) on the implementation of PMJAY, presented in the Assembly on Thursday, highlighted the irregularities in the scheme's implementation.
"The PMJAY scheme aimed to provide health coverage to all the targeted 1.21 crore beneficiary families in the state. The audit found that data for villages where no Ayushman Cards had been issued was not available on the pmjay.gov portal, and the Bihar Swasthya Suraksha Samiti (BSSS) had also not provided updated information to the audit," the report stated.
"However, the audit examined the data available (as of September 5, 2024) in the 'Village Penetration Dashboard' of the 'Insights-PMJAY' portal. According to the data on this portal, the audit found that out of the total 44,559 villages in the state, there were 595 such villages (1.34 per cent), which had eligible PMJAY beneficiaries, but no Ayushman Cards had been issued to them," it added.
As a result, there were no Ayushman Card holders in these 595 villages. This meant that the targeted beneficiaries in these 595 villages were deprived of the intended benefits of the scheme, which indicated poor Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) activities and monitoring mechanisms under the scheme, it said.
The Beneficiary Empowerment Guidebook for the scheme stated that "concerned authorities should ensure that beneficiaries have access to accurate, complete, and timely information, so that they can fully avail of their rightful entitlements under the scheme," it said.
PMJAY is a centrally sponsored scheme, which is funded by the government, and the funding is shared between the Centre and state governments. It provides health coverage up to Rs 5 lakh per family per year.