Telangana BJP senior leader Perala Shekhar on Friday moved the Supreme Court complaining that the KCR government has not been implementing the central government’s health scheme Ayushman Bharat Yojana.

Hearing the petition, the Supreme Court issued notice to the Telangana government asking it to explain why it has failed to implement the Ayushman Bharat Yojana scheme. The apex court issued notices to Telangana Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and gave two weeks’ time to the state government to file a counter-affidavit.

Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao had rejected the Ayushman Bharat scheme in favor of the state’s Aarogya Sri medical health cover scheme for the poor. In the past, he had stated that the state government is not interested in wasting public money on central schemes which are not beneficial to the people. KCR also claimed that Arogya Sri was far more beneficial and had a wider outreach than the Ayushman Bharat scheme.

In the petition, BJP leader Shekar appealed to the Supreme Court to direct the KCR government to implement the central government’s Ayushman Bharat scheme that covers corona treatment. He also contended that the Ayushman Bharat covers various serious ailments which are not included in the Arogya Sri and provided treatment free of cost to the patients. He alleged that the TS government was denying medical facility extended by the union government to Telangana people. In the petition, he also pointed out that several non-BJP ruling states like Odisha and West Bengal were not implementing the central health scheme.