CAG raises concern over beneficiary data quality

Apex auditor Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has raised concerns over the quality of data available in the Beneficiary Identification System (BIS), the key IT module that helps verify beneficiaries from the database and create beneficiary registries under the central government’s flagship free healthcare scheme Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY).

Tabled in Parliament on August 8, the CAG’s Performance Audit Report on AB-PMJAY covering the period September 2018 to March 2021 says it noted registration of multiple beneficiaries against the same or invalid mobile number were noted in the Beneficiary Identification System (BIS).  The audit report points out that over 7.49 lakh beneficiaries were registered against one (invalid) mobile number 9999999999. Another 1.39 lakh persons had ‘8888888888’ as their mobile number. The report also revealed that in 43,197 households, the size of the family was unrealistic, ranging from 11 to 201 members. Similarly, it was found that PMJAY ID was not unique in 1,57,176 cases.

 “Presence of such unrealistic members in a household in the BIS database indicates not only lack of essential validation controls in the beneficiary registration process, but also the possibility that beneficiaries are taking advantage of the lack of a clear definition of family in the guidelines”, the report said.

The analysis of BIS data also showed several inconsistencies in the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) database. The System showed different names and dates of birth of beneficiaries in two different columns. Other errors included invalid or blank entries in the fields for name, year of birth and gender of beneficiary. The name column was left blank in 22,78,579 cases.

Launched on 23 September 2018,  AB-PMJAY aims to provide health cover of ₹5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation to over 10.74 crore families from the poor and vulnerable section of the population, based on the deprivation and occupational criteria of the SECC (2011) database. As of November 2022, 7.87 crore beneficiary households were registered, constituting 73% of the targeted households of 10.74 crore.

The BIS database is key to the success of the scheme as all beneficiaries require registration in the system (BIS) once, either in advance or at the time of their first treatment, for availing benefits of the scheme. BIS has a provision for marking/flagging the beneficiaries to indicate whether they pertain to PMJAY or the State’s own scheme.

The report also points out that the National Health Authority (NHA), has agreed with the audit observation and replied that with the deployment of BIS 2.0, this issue shall be resolved. “The BIS 2.0 system has been configured so that more than certain number of families cannot use the same mobile number. This shall arrest the prevalence of entering “random numbers” which constitute the overwhelming cases of mobile number inconsistency”, the report said.