Yeshasvini Cooperative Farmers Health Care Scheme

What is the Yeshasvini scheme?

Yeshasvini, or the Yeshasvini Co-operative Farmers Health Care Scheme, is one of India's oldest large-scale health protection schemes, launched in Karnataka in 2003 for members of the state's cooperative movement. Yeshasvini is run by the Yeshasvini Co-operative Members Health Care Trust under the Department of Co-operation, Government of Karnataka, with the Chief Minister as Chief Patron and the Minister for Co-operation as Patron.

Yeshasvini is not an insurance policy. It is a self-funded trust scheme: the member pays a small annual contribution to his cooperative society, the state government contributes the balance, and the Trust settles claims directly with network hospitals. That structure is why the benefit is defined as a list of surgical procedures at listed hospitals, rather than as open-ended reimbursement.

According to the Trust, Yeshasvini provides:

• Cashless surgical treatment of up to Rs 5 lakh per family per year.
• A published list of more than 2,000 procedures, reported as 2,128 in current scheme material, spanning cardiology, cardiothoracic surgery, orthopaedics, neurosurgery, oncology, urology, gastroenterology, ophthalmology, gynaecology and general surgery.
• ICU and ventilator support during a covered admission.
• Treatment at network hospitals across Karnataka, both government and private.

An important point of history: Yeshasvini was discontinued after 2017-18, when Karnataka folded several health schemes into Arogya Karnataka. The Government of Karnataka announced its revival in the 2022-23 State Budget, and the Trust now runs the revised scheme. Any guidance you find dated between 2018 and 2022 describes a period when the scheme was not operating.

Who is eligible for Yeshasvini and who is not?

You can join Yeshasvini if:

• You are a member of a cooperative society registered in Karnataka. This is the single defining condition.
• You have completed the minimum membership period, published as three months before enrolment.
• You enrol during the Trust's annual enrolment window and pay the contribution through your society.
• You are a dependent family member of an enrolled member and were listed on the enrolment form.

The cooperative societies whose members qualify include primary agricultural credit cooperative societies, milk producers' cooperatives, weavers' cooperatives, fishermen's cooperatives, self-help groups affiliated to cooperative structures, beedi workers' cooperative organisations and similar registered bodies. Published scheme material states that no age restriction applies to covered members.

You cannot apply, or are not eligible, if:

• You are not a member of a registered cooperative society in Karnataka. Yeshasvini has no general public enrolment route, and this is the exclusion that surprises most people; a Karnataka resident cannot simply buy into the scheme.
• You joined your society less than three months before the enrolment date.
• You try to enrol after the annual window closes. Enrolment is not rolling, and a member who misses the window waits for the next scheme year.
• You are a family member who was not declared on the enrolment form and paid for. Adding a person mid-year is not possible.
• Your society has not remitted the collected contributions to the Trust, in which case your card will not activate even though you paid.

What is the Yeshasvini contribution?

Published rates for the revived scheme are approximately:

The contribution is paid per person covered, so a family of four pays four times the individual rate. The Government of Karnataka meets the balance of the scheme's cost. Contribution rates are revised by the Trust from time to time; confirm the current figure with your cooperative society before you pay.

What documents are required for Yeshasvini?

How to apply for Yeshasvini

1. Become a member of a cooperative society registered in Karnataka, if you are not one already, and complete the three-month minimum membership period.
2. Watch for the enrolment notification. The Trust opens enrolment once a year ahead of the scheme year, and the announcement reaches members through their society, not through individual letters.
3. Collect the enrolment form from your society's secretary. There is no direct individual enrolment with the Trust and no online self-registration.
4. List every family member you want covered, with their Aadhaar numbers. Anyone left off the list is uncovered for the whole scheme year.
5. Pay the annual contribution to the society for each listed person and collect a receipt.
6. Collect your Yeshasvini card, a plastic card carrying a QR code, once the society completes the enrolment. Check that every family member's name is correct.
7. Carry the card and Aadhaar whenever you go to a network hospital.

How do I use Yeshasvini at a hospital?

1. Choose a network hospital from the list on the Trust's website or ask your society for the nearest one. Treatment at a non-network hospital is not covered.
2. Report to the hospital's Yeshasvini or Arogya Mitra help desk with your card and Aadhaar.
3. The hospital raises a pre-authorisation request with the Trust for the proposed procedure, quoting the package code from the approved list.
4. Once the Trust approves, the treatment is cashless for the covered package. The hospital bills the Trust, not you.

If a network hospital asks you to pay in cash for a procedure that is on the approved list, refuse and call the Trust helpline before paying. Demanding payment for a covered package is a breach of the hospital's empanelment terms.

What Yeshasvini does not cover

Yeshasvini is built around surgical packages, so the following generally fall outside it:

• Routine outpatient consultations and diagnostic tests not tied to a covered admission.
• Medicines bought and taken at home.
• Purely medical admissions with no listed procedure.
• Procedures not on the approved list, however necessary they may be.
• Treatment at hospitals outside the network.
• Costs above the Rs 5 lakh annual family limit.

Check the procedure list on the Trust's website, or ask the hospital desk to confirm the package code, before assuming a treatment is covered. Where a treatment is not covered by Yeshasvini, a BPL family may still be able to use Ayushman Bharat–Arogya Karnataka, which works on a different and broader basis.

Why Yeshasvini claims fail

• Card not active, usually because the society did not remit the collected contribution to the Trust on time.
• The patient was never listed on the enrolment form.
• Enrolment lapsed because the member did not renew in the annual window. Yeshasvini cover is annual and does not roll over automatically.
• Non-network hospital chosen.
• Procedure not on the approved list.
• Pre-authorisation not raised before a planned admission.
• Annual family limit of Rs 5 lakh already exhausted.

Who do I contact about Yeshasvini?

• Yeshasvini Trust helpline: 080-26671616
• Trust office: No. 70, 2nd Floor, K.M.C. Building, Basavanagudi, Bengaluru 560004
• Your cooperative society secretary, for enrolment, card and renewal issues.
• District Registrar of Cooperative Societies, where a society has collected contributions but not enrolled its members.
• Hospital Yeshasvini or Arogya Mitra desk, for pre-authorisation and billing disputes at the point of treatment.

Enrolment is done only through your cooperative society. No agent can sell you a Yeshasvini card, and any card obtained outside the society route is not genuine.

How to check your application status

Yeshasvini has no individual online application, so there is no application ID or portal login to track the way you might for a central government scheme. Enrolment runs through your cooperative society, and checking status means checking whether your society's paperwork has actually reached the Trust and whether your card has been activated. Use these steps in order:

1. Ask your cooperative society secretary first. The society collects contributions and forwards the enrolment list to the Yeshasvini Trust, so the secretary is the first point of contact and usually knows whether your society's batch has been processed.
2. Confirm the contribution was remitted, not just collected. A common gap is that the society received your payment but has not yet sent the funds and enrolment list to the Trust. Ask specifically whether the remittance for your enrolment year has gone through, not just whether you paid.
3. Call the Yeshasvini Trust helpline on 080-26671616 if the society cannot confirm your status, or if enrolment closed weeks ago and you still have not received a card. Keep your society's name, your membership number, and the year of enrolment ready when you call.
4. Check the card itself once it arrives. Verify every covered family member's name and Aadhaar-linked details are correctly printed and that the QR code is present, since a card issued with an error will not work correctly at a hospital desk even though it looks issued.
5. If a claim or pre-authorisation is pending at a hospital rather than your enrolment itself, the hospital's Yeshasvini or Arogya Mitra help desk is the right place to follow up, since pre-authorisation approvals are tracked hospital-side with the Trust, not through the society.
6. Escalate to the District Registrar of Cooperative Societies only if your society itself is unresponsive or is suspected of having collected contributions without forwarding them, since the Registrar has oversight over the society's compliance, not over individual card issuance.

There is no SMS or app-based status check for Yeshasvini. Because enrolment is annual and does not carry forward, a status check is worth doing well before the scheme year begins, rather than after you already need treatment.