Ayushman Bharat Completes Eight Years, 60 Crore Beneficiaries

The correct answer is Rs 5 lakh. In his anniversary message the Prime Minister said that more than sixty crore beneficiaries now have access to an annual health cover of this amount, and that the reach of the cover is what makes the initiative the largest healthcare scheme in the world. Rs 1 lakh is wrong; no such figure appears in the message, and a cover that small would not carry a family through a serious hospital admission, which is the burden the scheme was designed to lift. Rs 3 lakh is wrong for the same reason and is offered only as a plausible-looking lower figure. Rs 10 lakh is wrong because the cover named is half that amount, though aspirants sometimes confuse it with other insurance products. The safest way to hold this is to remember the pair together: the cover amount on one side and the beneficiary count on the other, because examiners frequently ask for one and supply the other.

The correct answer is over 500 crore. The Prime Minister used this figure to argue that healthcare is moving closer to every doorstep, since the centres named Ayushman Arogya Mandirs deliver primary care in neighbourhoods and villages rather than in distant hospitals. The option of over 100 crore is wrong, as the message names a far larger count and this figure only looks plausible to someone recalling the number of beneficiaries instead. Over 300 crore is wrong as well; it appears nowhere in the release and is included to catch a half-remembered answer. Over 700 crore is wrong because it overshoots the stated figure, and no higher count is claimed anywhere in the anniversary message. Candidates should note that this figure counts visits, not people, so it is much larger than the beneficiary count and the two must never be interchanged in an answer.

The correct answer is that it is the largest healthcare scheme in the world. The Prime Minister said the annual cover now reaches more than sixty crore beneficiaries, and on that basis described the initiative as the biggest of its kind anywhere. The second option is wrong, because nothing in the message speaks of the scheme being wound up or merged; the tone of the anniversary message is the opposite, pointing to expansion and to record savings on medical expenses. The third option is wrong because the message identifies the poor and the middle class as the groups that have gained, not a restricted category of government employees. The fourth option is wrong because the cover described is an annual health cover, and the message separately credits the Ayushman Arogya Mandirs with strengthening primary care, showing that the two parts of the initiative are distinct rather than the cover being limited to outpatient visits.