Kolkata, Oct 29 (IANS): Trinamool Congress leader Kunal Ghosh said on Tuesday that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments slamming West Bengal and Delhi governments for not implementing the Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme are politically motivated.

“The Prime Minister, in an extremely dramatic pattern, has made such a politically motivated statement through which he could mislead and confuse the common people. The Prime Minister claims that he feels sorry that the people of West Bengal are deprived of the Union government’s sponsored scheme. However, the Prime Minister is not specifying the conditions to avail of the central scheme,” Ghosh said.

He said that it is not quite clear who is actually eligible to avail of the Ayushman Bharat scheme.

“There are several conditions for availing this central scheme, as a result of which almost 50 per cent of the population are unable to avail of the scheme,” Ghosh said.

At the same time, he drew a comparison between Ayushman Bharat and Swasthya Sathi, the West Bengal government’s own health insurance scheme.

“Each and every citizen of each and every family in West Bengal can avail scheme since no condition has been set for availing Swasthya Sathi. That is why that flawed and incomplete scheme of Ayushman Bharat has not been implemented in West Bengal,” Ghosh added.

He also said that the Prime Minister before making such politically motivated comments should spell out the conditions for availing the Ayushman Bharat scheme.

“It is unfortunate that despite knowing these loopholes in the central scheme the Prime Minister has made such a politically motivated statement just with the intention of misleading and confusing people,” Ghosh said.

Earlier, the Prime Minister claimed that the political decision of the West Bengal and Delhi government for not implementing the Ayushman Bharat scheme has left the elderly citizens unable to access free treatment under the scheme.