Citizens' Accountability LedgerWho owned the mess? 25 years, every party, on the record

Case 65 · Public money

Ayushman Bharat. Dead patients 'treated', ghost phone numbers

CAG report tabled Aug 2023

CAG-flagged fraud, no reckoning

1,103 days since Recorded outcome: CAG-flagged fraud, no reckoning.

Human cost Est
The poor the scheme exists to cover, crowded out by fraud and, the audit found, sometimes still charged despite 'cashless' care
Financial cost
₹6.97 cr paid to 'treat' 3,446 patients already recorded as dead; up to 7.5 lakh beneficiaries on one phone number

What happened

The national auditor's 2023 performance audit of the Ayushman Bharat health-insurance scheme found up to 7.5 lakh beneficiaries registered against a single mobile number (9999999999), thousands registered against the same Aadhaar numbers, ₹6.97 crore paid for the treatment of 3,446 patients already recorded as dead, and tens of thousands of cases of one patient admitted to several hospitals at the same time.

Claim against record

What the government said

The Health Ministry said mobile numbers play no role in verifying beneficiaries, that dummy numbers were used, and that AI-based checks and action on around 1.6 lakh flagged claims show fraud is being tackled.

What the record shows

CAG-flagged fraud, no reckoning

This is not an opposition allegation but a finding of the Comptroller and Auditor General, tabled in Parliament. It points to large-scale leakage of public health money into fraud and ghost claims in a scheme meant for the poorest, with weak checks to stop it. The Health Ministry disputed how the mobile-number data should be read, but the core irregularities passed without any senior accountability or a full, public reckoning.

What accountability should have looked like

Close the ghost-beneficiary and dead-patient loopholes, publish the fraud and recovery data, and hold administrators accountable for public health money lost to leakage.

Ministers and office-holders responsible

Naming who held the portfolio is a matter of public record. It is not by itself a finding of personal responsibility for any death or any rupee.

Sources

T1 primary record · T2 reporting · T3 partisan

Ask them officially. File an RTI Know a better source? Add one

Cite or export this case

Citizens' Accountability Ledger, "Ayushman Bharat. Dead patients 'treated', ghost phone numbers" (CAG report tabled Aug 2023), case-49. https://whoisresponsible.xyz/case/case-49/

JSON for this case The whole ledger as CSV

Quote the case id rather than the number on the card. The id never changes; the number shifts whenever an older case is added ahead of this one.