Arunachal Congress
Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee chief Takam Sanjoy addressing media in New Delhi on July 22, 2018. File Photo: Damien Lepcha

The Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) on Thursday questioned the viability of Chief Minister’s Arogya Arunachal Yojana (CMAAY), a health assurance scheme which was soft launched by Chief Minister Pema Khandu on Wednesday.

As per a press communiqué from the chief minister’s office, CMAAY will enable citizens to avail cashless health services in empanelled hospitals through a web portal based software developed and implemented by MDIndia, the third party administrator of the scheme. This new scheme will replace the erstwhile Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister’s Universal Health Insurance Scheme (APCMUHIS).

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Claiming that the CMMAAY was a mere extension of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s another unsuccessful scheme announced during the financial session of 2017, the Congress alleged that the scheme is nothing but a prank played by the BJP which has a culture of changing names of schemes and in this case it is the APCMUHIS which has been changed into CMAAY.

“The APCMUHIS initiated and implemented for the first time ever in the history of India by former Chief Minister Nabam Tuki during the Congress regime benefitted lakhs of people then. However, Chief Minister Pema Khandu-led BJP government, with sudden commotion, discontinued APCMUHIS stating that the scheme inherited technical defects and lacunae with no concrete and sustainable long term plans.

The BJP government also slammed APCCs repeated demand to revive APCMUHIS earlier in 2017 stating that the scheme was not comprehensive and patient friendly. So, if APCMUHIS is not comprehensive and sustainable, then how CMAAY can be patient friendly when it is a mere extension of another unsuccessful scheme of the Central government,” APCC spokesperson, Mina Toko said in a statement on Thursday.

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Further claiming that the people of Arunachal Pradesh has to once again stand in the queue for months to obtain the CMAAY health card in the name of quality health care, the Congress added that the scheme is just a political trick played by the BJP in view of the 2019 elections.