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NEW DELHI: Union health minister and BJP national president J P Nadda on Friday hit out at West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, accusing her government of obstructing the Centre’s Ayushman Bharat health scheme, and declared that the “time has come for the lotus to bloom” in the state.
Speaking at the official launch of Ayushman Bharat in Odisha’s Cuttack, Nadda drew parallels between states that resisted the scheme and electoral outcomes, citing examples of Delhi, Odisha, and Bengal. He said, “There were three states that didn’t implement the Ayushman Bharat scheme despite repeated requests by the Centre. One was Odisha, where the lotus has bloomed. The second one was Delhi, where (Arvind) Kejriwal became a hindrance to the scheme and faced defeat. I want to tell that neighbouring Bengal has also not implemented it.”
Assembly elections in West Bengal are scheduled for March-April 2026.
Taking a direct jab at former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Nadda said, “I kept telling Kejriwal to implement it, implement it, implement it, but his nose is so long that it came in the way of the people of Delhi, he did not let it be implemented, the people of Delhi defeated him and made the lotus bloom.”
He further accused Odisha’s former CM Naveen Patnaik of blocking the scheme out of “ego” and said it took the people’s mandate to make way for its implementation. “I kept telling him that you should explain to Naveen Babu… His ego did not allow it to be implemented,” Nadda said.
Odisha, which was ruled by the BJD until June 2024, had earlier opted out of Ayushman Bharat, instead launching its own Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana (BSKY), now rebranded as the Gopabandhu Jan Arogya Yojana (GJAY). Nadda noted that both central and state health schemes will now run in tandem.
He added that nearly 3.5 crore out of Odisha’s 4.5 crore population will benefit from the dual implementation of Ayushman Bharat and GJAY.
Lauding the state’s decision, Nadda said, “Because of taking the right decision at the right time, today the right policy has been implemented on the land of Odisha… both the Prime Minister Jan Arogya Yojana and Gop Bandhu Jan Arogya Yojana have started reaching about 3 crore 51 lakh people.”
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