SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir governor Satya Pal Malik on Saturday approved foreclosure of the contract with Reliance General Insurance Company (RGIC) for implementing the Group Mediclaim Health Insurance Policy for the employees and pensioners in the state.
The matter has also been referred to the newly constituted Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) for investigations.
Former chief minister and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah had on Thursday demanded a probe after allegations of fraud into allotment of group mediclaim policy — for state government employees to RGIC — prompted Malik to scrap the scheme.
“The Hon @jandkgovernor now needs to order an inquiry headed by the chief secretary to establish who was behind the allotment of the insurance contract. The sums of money involved are too big for this to have been a straight-forward mistake,” Abdullah had tweeted.
Malik’s administration had on September 20 formally rolled out the scheme for employees, pensioners and accredited journalists in the state. This came into effect from October 1.
Earlier, Malik had told reporters that the contract was“almost terminated” after he found that the allotment was “full of frauds” and that the formal decision “will come in writing in two days”. In a statement on Saturday, the state government spokesman said ever since sanction was accorded to the implementation of the insurance scheme, doubts have been expressed in various quarters, including a cross-section of the society and the media, about the credibility of the process.
“This has cast a shadow on the entire process followed in finalising the scheme,” he said.
He said as the governor’s administration is mandated to provide good, transparent, fair and employee-friendly governance, it was felt that it would be difficult to go ahead with the implementation of the scheme.
The matter has been referred to the ACB for examining the entire process to see whether it was conducted in a transparent and fair manner, the spokesman added.
“Keeping in view the importance of the matter, the government has directed the ACB director to personally look into the matter rather than entrusting it to someone else,” he said, adding, an action would then be taken on the ACB findings.
But Reliance Insurance chief communication officer said: “Whatever we are hearing, it is all through the media and there is no official communication with us from the Jammu and Kashmir government.”
Principal secretary (finance) Navin K Choudhary had earlier said the policy was tied up with M/S Reliance General Insurance Company Limited on annual premium of ₹8,777 and ₹22,229 (for employees and pensioners respectively).