The National Health Authority (NHA) has collaborated with various ministries implementing welfare schemes to strengthen the different aspects of Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) scheme implementation including inter alia beneficiary awareness campaigns, beneficiary database (SECC 2011) enrichment etc.
The beneficiary database enrichment under AB PM-JAY would mean adding additional parameters to database for ease of search.
The NHA is mandated with the implementation of PM Jan Arogya Yojana and total 10.74 crore beneficiary families have been identified from the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) of 2011 basis 6 deprivation and 11 occupational criteria across rural and urban areas, respectively under the scheme.
The NHA is working on integrating the SECC 2011 beneficiary database with NFSA, which will enable beneficiaries to seek information regarding their entitlement under the AB PM-JAY using their ration card number. The health authority is also working on a proposal to use Fair Price Shops or Ration shops for providing information related to the scheme and entitlement under the scheme to eligible beneficiaries.
Aadhaar being a common identity across the majority of government databases will enable this integration.
“In this direction, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) issued Operational Manuals (OM) on October 27, December 6 and 14, 2021. These OMs have enabled sharing of Aadhaar among different departments of the government. As per the OM, different departments of the Central government administering Section 7 can be treated as a single entity under the Aadhaar Act, 2016,” said the NHA in a statement.
The Department of Food and Public Distribution has also issued OM wherein states and UTs were requested to provide necessary assistance and cooperation for sharing of the NFSA ration card data along with the corresponding Aadhaar with NHA.
The NHA said that the onus of ensuring the compliance of various provisions and regulations regarding data protection, data storage and data privacy, etc, and in particular, seeking consent will lie with the user departments i.e., in this case NHA.
States and UTs are providing necessary assistance in this regard and none of the states or UTs has expressed any reservation to NHA in sharing the data, said NHA in a statement.
