Biju Krushak Kalyan Yojana (BKKY), Odisha

What was Biju Krushak Kalyan Yojana?

Biju Krushak Kalyan Yojana (BKKY) was the Government of Odisha's cashless health insurance scheme for farmer families. BKKY was launched on 12 November 2013 at Bhubaneswar and rolled out through the Agriculture & Farmers' Empowerment Department, with the stated aim of protecting farm households from catastrophic out-of-pocket medical spending.

The scheme's design was straightforward for its time. A farmer family was enrolled and issued a smart card; treatment at an empanelled hospital was then cashless, with the state paying the premium and the insurer settling with the hospital, so the family did not have to find money up front and claim it back later. The insurance risk was carried by general insurance companies, and treatment was delivered through a network of government hospitals, Community Health Centres and empanelled private hospitals across Odisha's districts.

The 2018-19 Odisha Budget speech described BKKY in these words: it "has been designed with the objective of providing health security to farmers and their families by way of cashless treatment through a network of 100 hospitals", and proposed Rs 90 crore towards health insurance cover for about 57 lakh farmers' families.

BKKY is often written in Odia and in transliteration simply as Biju Krushak Kalyan Yojana, and the acronym BKKY is how it appears in most state records.

Is BKKY still open?

No. BKKY is not accepting new enrolments, its dedicated website is no longer reachable, and no current allocation for it appears in recent Odisha Budget speeches. Farmer families are instead covered by Odisha's universal health assurance scheme.

That scheme was launched as Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana (BSKY) and has since been renamed Gopabandhu Jan Arogya Yojana (GJAY). The change is visible in the state's own web estate: the former address bsky.odisha.gov.in now redirects to gjay.odisha.gov.in, and the Health & Family Welfare Department's citizen information menu at health.odisha.gov.in now lists "Gopabandhu Jan Arogya Yojana (GJAY)" where BSKY once stood.

The 2021-22 Odisha Budget speech set out what the successor delivers: assured free health services to all people in all public health institutions, from sub-centres to medical colleges, plus annual health coverage of Rs 5 lakh per family for over 70 lakh economically vulnerable families, and Rs 10 lakh for the women members of the family, with an allocation of Rs 1,353 crore in that year.

For a farmer household, this is a widening rather than a loss. BKKY was limited to farmer families and to an insured sum; the successor covers the household regardless of occupation and does not require a separate farmer identity.

Who was eligible for BKKY, and who is eligible now

Under BKKY (historical):

• Farmer families of Odisha were the target group, identified through the Agriculture & Farmers' Empowerment Department's records.
• The card covered the enrolled family unit rather than one named individual.

Who could not apply for BKKY: non-farming households were outside its scope, which was the central limitation of the scheme and one reason a universal replacement was introduced.

Under Gopabandhu Jan Arogya Yojana (current):

• All residents of Odisha can use public health institutions free of charge under the state's health assurance commitment.
• The Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh annual cover applies to families identified as economically vulnerable by the Health & Family Welfare Department, not to every household.
• Families already covered under Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY are handled through the combined PMJAY/GJAY card, which the Health Department's portal lets you check by name and mobile number.

Farmers who are not in an economically vulnerable category cannot claim the Rs 5 lakh insured cover simply by virtue of being farmers; free treatment at public institutions is separate from the insured package.

What documents are needed

How to apply for health cover now that BKKY has closed

BKKY has no live application route, so the steps below are the real path for a farmer family in Odisha seeking cashless treatment today.

1. Check whether your family already has a health card. Open gjay.odisha.gov.in and use the health card number lookup, or use the "Check Your PMJAY / GJAY Health Card Number" link published on health.odisha.gov.in.
2. If no card is found, visit the nearest government hospital or the district headquarters hospital and ask for the Ayushman Mitra / GJAY help desk. Carry your Aadhaar card and your ration card.
3. Get the family enrolled and the card issued. The help desk verifies your household against the state's beneficiary database and prints or activates the card for the family.
4. Use the card at an empanelled hospital. The list of private empanelled hospitals is published on health.odisha.gov.in under Citizen Information, so check it before you travel for treatment.
5. If treatment is refused or a payment is demanded at an empanelled hospital, raise it with the hospital's Ayushman Mitra desk immediately, and then with the District Medical Officer.

What happened to BKKY smart cards

BKKY smart cards were issued against annual insurance policies. Once the state moved to a universal health assurance model, those policies were not renewed, and the smart card ceased to be an operative document. A BKKY card in a farmer's possession today has no claim value. Do not pay anyone to "renew", "revive" or "upgrade" a BKKY card; no such process exists.

If you were treated under BKKY while it was operating and have an unsettled claim, take the discharge summary, the card and the hospital bill to the District Agriculture Officer and the District Medical Officer; legacy claim questions are handled at district level and not through any online portal.

Where to raise a grievance

• Health entitlement questions: the Health & Family Welfare Department at health.odisha.gov.in, and the GJAY help desk at your district headquarters hospital.
• Odisha State Treatment Fund (OSTF): for critical illness assistance that falls outside the insured package, the Health Department publishes the OSTF application and status pages on health.odisha.gov.in.
• Farmer-side questions: the District Agriculture Officer, and the Agriculture & Farmers' Empowerment Department at agri.odisha.gov.in.
• General grievances against a state department: Odisha's Jansunani platform at janasunani.odisha.gov.in.

A note on figures. The insured sum per family under BKKY, and the split between its plan variants, is quoted in several secondary sources but is not published on any currently live Odisha government page, so it is deliberately not stated here as fact. The figures given above — the 12 November 2013 launch, the network of 100 hospitals, the roughly 57 lakh farmer families and the Rs 90 crore provision in 2018-19 to come from the Odisha Budget speech and are the ones that can be verified.

How to check your application status

BKKY itself has no live enrolment or claim-tracking system left to check: the scheme's own portal is gone and no fresh applications are accepted. What a farmer family in Odisha can actually check today falls into two separate cases.

Checking whether your family already has a current health card (GJAY / PMJAY):

1. Go to gjay.odisha.gov.in and use the health card number lookup. You will typically need to search by name, Aadhaar number or the mobile number linked to the household.
2. If the online lookup does not return a result, use the "Check Your PMJAY / GJAY Health Card Number" link on health.odisha.gov.in under Citizen Information, which searches the same underlying beneficiary database from a different entry point.
3. If both searches come back blank, this does not always mean your family is excluded. It can also mean the household record has not yet been matched or digitised. In that case visit the Ayushman Mitra desk at your nearest government hospital in person; the desk staff can search the database directly and, where the family qualifies, initiate card issuance on the spot rather than leaving it to a self-service portal.
4. Keep the acknowledgement or card number given by the Ayushman Mitra desk. This is the reference you use for any later follow-up, in the same way a token number is used for other government services.

Checking a legacy BKKY claim that was left unsettled when the scheme closed:

There is no portal for this. BKKY claims from before the scheme's closure are handled manually at district level.

1. Assemble the discharge summary, the BKKY smart card and the hospital bill for the treatment in question.
2. Take these to the District Agriculture Officer first, since BKKY enrolment ran through the Agriculture & Farmers' Empowerment Department, and ask for the status of the claim against the insurer's settlement records.
3. If the Agriculture Officer cannot trace it, the District Medical Officer holds the hospital-side treatment and billing records and can confirm whether the claim was submitted to the insurer at all.
4. Because no online reference number exists for these legacy cases, always ask the district office to note down in writing (or by SMS/email if offered) whatever status they give you, since there is no portal to check back against later.

There is no SMS-based or call-centre status check specific to BKKY, and no helpline number for the scheme is currently published on any Odisha government page, so treat the district-office route as the only real channel for a legacy claim.

Common reasons for rejection

Since BKKY takes no new applications, "rejection" today happens at two different points: when a family's card request under the successor scheme is turned down or delayed, and when a claim at an empanelled hospital is refused. Neither has a formal appeal form; both are resolved by fixing the underlying mismatch and returning to the same desk.

• Aadhaar or ration card details do not match the state's beneficiary database. A family's name, date of birth or address recorded on Aadhaar often differs slightly from what is held in the ration card or the older BKKY farmer record. The fix is to get the two documents aligned (through the local ration office or Aadhaar update centre) before returning to the Ayushman Mitra desk, rather than repeatedly resubmitting the same mismatched pair.
• The household is not listed as an economically vulnerable family for the Rs 5 lakh / Rs 10 lakh cover. Free treatment at public institutions is available to all Odisha residents, but the higher insured cover under GJAY is restricted to families identified as economically vulnerable. A farmer family that does not fall into this category will not get the insured card even though it may have qualified for BKKY earlier, since the two schemes use different eligibility logic. There is no online exception process for this; it has to be raised with the Health & Family Welfare Department or the district office if the family believes it was wrongly left out of the vulnerable list.
• The hospital is not on the empanelled list. A claim or cashless request made at a private hospital that is not on the list published under Citizen Information on health.odisha.gov.in will be refused, regardless of how genuine the treatment need is. Always confirm empanelment before admission, not after.
• Treatment sought is outside the covered package. Government cashless health schemes cover a defined package of procedures; treatment outside that package, or elective procedures not linked to the insured condition, are commonly declined at the hospital's Ayushman Mitra desk. Where the condition is a genuine critical illness that falls outside the package, the route is to apply separately to the Odisha State Treatment Fund (OSTF) through health.odisha.gov.in rather than to keep pressing the same claim.
• Presenting an old BKKY smart card as if it were still valid. Since BKKY policies were not renewed once the state moved to the successor scheme, a hospital will not process a claim on a BKKY card alone. This is not a paperwork error to be corrected; the card genuinely carries no claim value any more, and the family needs to obtain a current GJAY/PMJAY card through the process described above.
• Payment demanded, or treatment refused, despite holding a valid current card. This is not a rejection on eligibility grounds but a service failure at the hospital end. It should be raised immediately with the hospital's Ayushman Mitra desk, and escalated to the District Medical Officer if not resolved, rather than treated as a reason the family was ineligible.