We are committed to leverage all resources to ensure that the out-of-pocket expenditure on health is reduced and all citizens can avail necessary medical services.

This entry was imported as a 2019 promise of "a unique health ID for every citizen" under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission. We read the 2019 manifesto's health chapter. It commits to Ayushman Bharat's insurance coverage, to health and wellness centres, to medical education and to controlling medicine prices; it says nothing about digital health, health IDs or electronic health records. The mission was launched nationally in September 2021, more than two years later. The claim has been replaced with the manifesto's actual health commitment — reducing out-of-pocket expenditure and ensuring all citizens can obtain medical services — and the mission is assessed as the instrument the government now points to.

On creation, the number is remarkable: "As on 27th July 2026, 95.73 crore Ayushman Bharat Health Accounts (ABHAs) have been created." That is more than two-thirds of India's population, achieved for a total spend of ₹860.31 crore since 2021 — a very low cost per identifier, largely because ABHAs are generated at the point of any interaction with a participating facility or scheme.

The question that matters is what those identifiers connect to, and here the answer is conspicuous by what it omits. The member asked for "the number of patients with ABHA IDs who are able to upload their health records and who have access to their health records digitally in the country, State-wise". The ministry's reply gives no number at all: "Any citizen who has an ABHA can upload their health records and can securely access and manage their health records digitally with an ABDM-enabled Personal Health Record (PHR) application."

That is a statement about capability, not usage. A health ID with no prescriptions, no lab reports and no discharge summaries attached to it does nothing for the patient it belongs to. Whether 95.73 crore accounts correspond to 95.73 crore people with usable digital records, or to a much smaller number, cannot be answered from this document or any other we hold.

Part of the reason is architectural and honestly stated. ABDM is deliberately federated: "There is no centralised repository of data", records stay with the provider and move only on the patient's consent. That is a serious privacy protection, and it comes with a trade-off the ministry does not spell out — the centre cannot easily report how much of the network is live, because it does not hold the data.

On the promise this entry now carries — reducing out-of-pocket health spending and ensuring access to medical services — the digital mission is an enabler at best, and no measurement of out-of-pocket expenditure appears in this answer. The accuracy is therefore recorded as unverifiable: an ID count does not answer the question the manifesto asked to be judged on.