VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday launched the YSR Bima Scheme with new guidelines under which the State government itself will directly pay the insurance amount to the family of deceased for speedy disposal of claims.The government allocated Rs 750 crore for 2021-22 for implementation of the scheme covering 1.32 crore poor families in the State. In the last two years, it had spent Rs 1,307 crore on implementing YSR Bima.

Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister said his government had given top priority to public health. The annual family income to get the benefit of YSR Aarogyasri was pegged at Rs 5 lakh and the number of treatments covered under it was increased to 2,450. As promised, the government had introduced YSR Bima under which poor families will get the insurance benefit if they lose the breadwinner. An insurance amount of Rs 1 lakh will be paid if the beneficiary aged between 18 and 50 years dies of natural causes. A sum of Rs 5 lakh will be paid if the beneficiary in the age group of 18 to 70 years dies in an accident.

The Centre had withdrawn from the insurance scheme from April 2020, which used to pay 50 per cent premium. After the Centre’s withdrawal, the entire premium is being paid by the State to provide social security to poor families in case of lose of breadwinner.However, the Centre had come up with more clauses for its implementation, closing the existing group insurance system and making bank account mandatory for every person.

It had also added another clause of 45-day lien period from the day of account opening for settlement of insurance claim. If the policy holder dies within 45 days, the insurance amount will not be paid to his family, he explained. The State government had brought 1.21 crore families under the insurance scheme and paid the premium, he said.

However, only 62.5 lakh beneficiaries were enrolled due to delay in opening individual bank accounts. The remaining beneficiaries were not enrolled despite the payment of premium, he said. “Banks need to follow up with individual claims with insurance companies to process the registration. But, banks were unable to perform these follow-up activities. With this there was a severe delay in the receipt of claims even after enrolment. Due to the clause of 45-day lien period, 12,039 families could not get insurance claims following the death of beneficiaries in the meantime. The State government had paid Rs 254 crore to settle all those 12,039 claims on humanitarian grounds, he said.

Jagan said the government took the entire responsibility of implementation of the insurance scheme after witnessing all the chaos in settling claims of beneficiaries. Under the revised guidelines, the claim of beneficiary should be cleared within one month of receiving the application. The responsibility of scrutinising insurance applications has been entrusted to village/ward secretariats, which will be monitored by Joint Collectors. Any eligible person who was left out from YSR Bima, can call toll free number 155214 to get himself registered or his grievance redressed, he added.

Minister for Labour and Employment Gummanur Jayaram, Special Chief Secretary (Labour) G Anantha Ramu, Special Chief Secretary Ajay Jain, Principal Secretary (PR&RD) Gopalakrishna Dwivedi, Special Commissioner (Labour) Rekha Rani, SERP CEO Rajababu and other officials were present.Meanwhile, the State govt has entrusted the coordination and monitoring of the four insurance schemes — YSR Bima, Farmer Suicides, YSR Matsyakara Bharosa and YSR Pasu Nashtaparihara Padhakam — to the dept of gram/ward volunteers and village secretariats/ward secretariats.