Chandigarh, Jan 5 The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government's announcement of providing a health insurance cover of Rs 10 lakh to 65 lakh families in Punjab is a bundle of "lies aimed at misleading people", the BJP alleged on Monday, claiming that the government is paying only Rs 1 lakh as insurance premium to the insurance company.
"When the government is paying a premium of just Rs 1 lakh to the company, how can the company provide an insurance cover of Rs 10 lakh?" BJP leader Manoranjan Kalia asked.
He said the government claims that under the scheme, to cover 65 lakh families for a population of three crore, a premium of Rs 1 lakh will be paid by the government to United India Insurance Company, while the remaining financial burden has been placed on the state health agency, meaning it will ultimately fall on the state exchequer.
Kalia questioned how the government would bear such a huge expenditure from the state treasury when it does not even have sufficient funds to pay old-age and widow pensions.
The former minister said Punjab today is burdened with a debt of over Rs 4 lakh crore, and the per capita debt has reached Rs 1,23,274. He further claimed that the state’s share from the Goods and Services Tax (GST) has declined by 40.35 per cent.
In addition, Kalia said that Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) has outstanding dues of more than Rs 10,500 crore, making it difficult to understand how the government would bear such a massive cost of the people's medical treatment from the state exchequer.
Kalia said the AAP government's health insurance scheme was merely a bundle of hollow promises and false claims. He warned that the people of Punjab have now understood the truth and that the government would have to account for what he described as deception.
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