The government’s auditor has said more than half of the Rs 8,500 crores sent by the Centre to UP from 2005 to 2011, under the NRHM scheme, has been embezzled.
In 2005, the UPA government launched the NRHM scheme and huge amounts of money were sent to states to provide accessible and affordable healthcare to the poorest families in remote regions.
The CBI has found in its preliminary enquiry that the NRHM mission directorate in UP had received thousand of crores of rupees as funds between 2005 and 2011 for running schemes like Mission Flexipool, Immunisation, Reproductive Child Health and the National Blindness Control Programme. Huge amounts of funds for civil construction and upgradation of hospitals were also received by them.
“The funds under the said scheme were channelled to the respective district health societies of all the districts in UP and were utilised by the concerned officials. The enquiry so far has indicated that drugs/equipment supplied by these firms at exorbitant rates were of sub-standard quality,” the sources said.
The large-scale bungling in the Centrally-funded programme involved not only heavy over-invoicing, but even fake supply of medicines and hospital equipment by fictitious firms as well as huge kickbacks in construction activity undertaken with a view to improving available health services in government-run primary health centres in rural areas. The CBI on Friday had carried out raids at 30 locations, including the medicine market in Aminabad in Lucknow, as part of a massive search operation. According to sources, the residences of some doctors and medicine suppliers were also covered in the operation.