Mukhyamantri Adhivakta Swasthya Bima Yojana (Jharkhand)

What is Mukhyamantri Adhivakta Swasthya Bima Yojana?

Mukhyamantri Adhivakta Swasthya Bima Yojana is a fully state-funded health insurance scheme of the Government of Jharkhand for practising advocates and their families. The Department of Health, Medical Education and Family Welfare runs it through the Jharkhand State Arogya Society, the same agency that administers the state's other public health insurance programmes, in partnership with an empanelled insurance company.

The scheme gives an enrolled advocate's family cashless hospital treatment worth Rs 5 lakh a year, extended to Rs 10 lakh where the illness is critical or life-threatening. The entire premium, reported at about Rs 6,000 a year per advocate, is paid by the state government. An advocate who enrols pays nothing at all; neither a premium share nor a co-payment at the hospital counter for covered treatment.

The scheme is often written locally as Adhivakta Swasthya Bima Yojana. It sits inside a wider package of advocate welfare measures approved by the Jharkhand cabinet in September 2024, which also raised the pension for advocates aged 65 and above from Rs 7,000 to Rs 14,000 a month and provided a monthly stipend of Rs 5,000 for newly enrolled advocates. The insurance component was rolled out on 3 May 2025. Around 30,000 advocates in Jharkhand were identified as the target group at the time of the cabinet decision.

Who is eligible for Adhivakta Swasthya Bima Yojana?

You are eligible if:

• You are a practising advocate registered with the Jharkhand State Bar Council, with a valid enrolment number.
• You are also registered with the Advocates' Welfare Fund Trust Committee. Both registrations are stated conditions, not alternatives.
• You are practising in Jharkhand and your Bar Council record is current.

Your dependants who can be covered are the spouse, dependent children and dependent parents named at the time of enrolment. Published scheme summaries describe the dependency conditions as dependent children up to about 25 years, unmarried daughters, and parents whose monthly pension does not exceed about Rs 9,000. Because these limits are set in the policy document rather than in public press notes, verify them on the enrolment portal before you finalise the family list.

You are not eligible and cannot apply if:

• You are enrolled with another state's Bar Council and not with Jharkhand's.
• You are a law student, intern or paralegal, or an employee of a law firm who is not an enrolled advocate.
• You have stopped practising and your Bar Council registration is not current.
• You are a family member who was not named at enrolment, an unnamed relative cannot be added to a claim after the event.

Advocates who already hold other government health cover should note that this scheme is specific to the legal profession and is not a substitute for a general public insurance entitlement; overlapping cover is handled by the insurer's standard rules on contribution.

What documents are required for enrolment?

How to apply for Adhivakta Swasthya Bima Yojana

1. Open the state health insurance enrolment portal at sehis.jharkhand.gov.in and select the advocate scheme. Enrolment for this scheme is handled online rather than by paper form.
2. Register using your Bar Council enrolment number, name and mobile number, and verify with the OTP sent to that number.
3. Fill in the advocate profile: enrolment details, Aadhaar number, address and Advocates' Welfare Fund Trust Committee membership details.
4. Add each dependent family member you want covered, with their Aadhaar number and relationship. Do this carefully: a person left off the list at enrolment cannot use the cover afterwards.
5. Upload the scanned Bar Council certificate, Aadhaar copies and photographs in the file sizes the portal specifies, then submit the application.
6. Wait for verification by the Bar Council and the scheme authorities against the advocate roll.
7. On approval, the PVC health card is issued by the insurance company. Collect it through the route the portal or your Bar association indicates, and check that every dependant's name is printed correctly.

There is no premium payment step in this process. If any website or agent asks an advocate to pay a premium for this scheme, that is not the government scheme.

How does the cashless treatment work?

Mukhyamantri Adhivakta Swasthya Bima Yojana works on the cashless model used by Jharkhand's other public health insurance programmes:

1. Go to a hospital empanelled under the scheme and report to the insurance help desk before admission.
2. Present the scheme health card and a photo ID. The help desk verifies the patient against the policy record.
3. The hospital raises the pre-authorisation request with the insurer for the planned treatment. In an emergency, treatment starts and authorisation follows.
4. Covered treatment is billed directly to the insurer up to the Rs 5 lakh annual limit, extended to Rs 10 lakh in a critical illness case, so the family does not pay and then claim.

Treatment at a hospital that is not empanelled falls outside the cashless arrangement. Before a planned admission it is worth confirming with the State Arogya Society helpline, 18003455027, that the hospital you have chosen is on the current empanelment list.

How much is the cover and what does it include?

The headline figures are Rs 5 lakh a year for the family and Rs 10 lakh for critical or life-threatening illness. The cover is a family floater — the Rs 5 lakh is shared across the advocate and every dependant named on the policy during the policy year, not granted separately to each person.

Advocates with a disability, and advocates with a disabled dependant, are described in scheme summaries as receiving lifetime coverage, which removes the risk of cover lapsing for exactly the households least able to buy private insurance.

The precise list of covered procedures, waiting periods and exclusions is fixed in the insurance policy contract between the state and the insurer. That document, not a news report, is the authority on whether a particular procedure is payable, and it is worth asking your Bar association for the current year's version.

Why enrolment or a claim can fail

• Bar Council record not current, so the enrolment number does not validate against the advocate roll.
• No Advocates' Welfare Fund Trust Committee membership, which is a stated second condition of eligibility.
• A dependant not named at enrolment. This is the most common practical failure. The card works for the advocate but not for the parent or child who was left off.
• Name or Aadhaar mismatch between the Bar Council record, the Aadhaar and the health card.
• Admission at a non-empanelled hospital, where the cashless facility does not operate.
• Treatment outside the policy's covered list, for example a procedure falling in a stated exclusion.

Where to get help or raise a grievance

• Jharkhand State Arogya Society helpline: 18003455027, for empanelment, card and claim questions.
• Department of Health, Medical Education and Family Welfare, Ranchi: 0651-2490314 and 0651-2491033.
• Jharkhand State Bar Council, for enrolment and eligibility verification issues, the Bar Council is the body that confirms your practising status to the scheme.
• Your district Bar association, which in practice is the fastest route for advocates to get enrolment camps and document verification organised locally.

Enrolment is free. No advocate should pay a premium, a facilitation fee or a card charge for Mukhyamantri Adhivakta Swasthya Bima Yojana.

How to check your enrolment or claim status

Because enrolment for Mukhyamantri Adhivakta Swasthya Bima Yojana runs online through the state health insurance portal, there are a few practical ways to track where your application or a hospital claim stands.

Check your enrolment status online. Log in to the enrolment portal at sehis.jharkhand.gov.in with the same Bar Council enrolment number and mobile number you registered with. The portal shows whether your submitted documents are still under verification, whether the Bar Council has confirmed your practising status, and whether your health card has been generated. If the portal shows no record of your application at all, your submission likely did not go through, and you should re-register rather than wait.

Watch for the SMS or portal update on approval. Advocates typically get a notification on the registered mobile number once verification is complete and the PVC health card is ready. If it has been several weeks since you submitted your documents and you have had no update, that is a sign to follow up rather than assume the card is on its way.

Call the Jharkhand State Arogya Society helpline for a manual check. The helpline, 18003455027, can look up an enrolment or a hospital claim against your Bar Council enrolment number when the portal status is unclear or the online record seems stuck. Keep your enrolment number and the mobile number used at registration ready when you call, since the helpline staff will ask for these to pull up your record.

Use the Department of Health numbers for escalation. If the helpline does not resolve the query, the Department of Health, Medical Education and Family Welfare in Ranchi can be reached at 0651-2490314 or 0651-2491033. This route is more useful for a stuck verification or a disputed claim than for a routine status check.

Go through your Bar Council or district Bar association for a document-verification hold-up. Since eligibility verification depends on the Bar Council confirming your practising status, a status that stays "under verification" for a long time is often a Bar Council-side delay rather than a portal problem. Your district Bar association can usually chase this faster than an individual advocate calling the helpline, because it deals with the Bar Council and the scheme authorities on enrolment camps regularly.

For a hospital claim already in progress, the empanelled hospital's insurance help desk is the first point of status contact, since it is the hospital that raises the pre-authorisation request with the insurer. If the hospital cannot get a response from the insurer within a reasonable time, escalate to the Arogya Society helpline rather than continuing to wait at the hospital desk.