National Insurance raises objections in fresh bids for Punjab Ayushman Bharat

State run National Insurance has raised objections with Punjab Government on inviting a fresh round of bidding for Ayushman Bharat scheme.

The general insurer said that the state government invited a fresh round of bidding after it was initially shortlisted, and that in the fresh tender private players were also made eligible for the process despite their poor track record.

One of the world's largest government healthcare programme, Ayushman Bharat aims to cover around 50 crore poor people.


According to documents reviewed by ET, National Insurance in a mail to the Punjab government has said the subsequent cancellation of tender, in which they had emerged as winner, has now resulted in their bid price being exposed to their market competitors thus putting them in a disadvantageous position.

“Private players always quote low to win the bid and reject claims in the latter half of the policy period once claims increase and starts hurting their profit,” it said in its letter citing examples of state of Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh where some private players allegedly abandoned the schemes.

A senior official from the Punjab government, however, said that the government had to cancel the original tender after negotiations with National Insurance failed on the price.

“Initially they were not willing to bring down the rates. We were in constant negotiations to get the best price but because of their lacklustre approach we had to invite fresh tenders,” he said.

Punjab’s additional chief secretary health Satish Chandra also confirmed the development and said that the rates offered by National insurance were not favourable to Punjab government forcing them to issue fresh tender and invite new bids including private players.

National Insurance which had initially won the bids at Rs 897 per family after a series of negotiations had agreed to bring it down to Rs 730 per family with certain conditions.