SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Awareness · Question 15 of 99

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

When was the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana introduced to provide health insurance to people below the poverty line?

(a)2014
(b)2008
(c)2017
(d)2009

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana was launched by the Ministry of Labour and Employment and rolled out from 2008 as a smart-card based health insurance cover for families below the poverty line.

It carried ₹30,000 of hospitalisation cover per family per year on a floater basis, against a ₹30 registration fee paid by the beneficiary. Option (b) is the year the scheme reached the field.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
2014 — 2014 is far too late — RSBY smart cards had been issued to BPL households for six years by then.
(c)
2017 — 2017 falls late in the scheme's life, not at its start. RSBY was folded into Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY, launched in 2018.
(d)
2009 — 2009 is the commonest miss, one year past the launch. The rollout to BPL families had begun the previous year.

Concept

RSBY was India's first large cashless and portable health insurance scheme aimed at the poor.

Enrolment ran on a biometric smart card issued to the family, so treatment could be taken at any empanelled hospital, public or private, without the household paying cash up front and claiming later.

The premium was shared between the Centre and the state rather than paid by the beneficiary, which is what made it a welfare scheme and not an insurance product. Administration moved from the Ministry of Labour and Employment to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in 2015.

SSC asks the launch year, not the design, so what a student needs from this item is a date line. RSBY still turns up as the predecessor of Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY, which absorbed it.

Key facts

RSBY was launched by the Ministry of Labour and Employment and rolled out from 2008 for families below the poverty line.
Cover was ₹30,000 per family per year on a floater basis, against a ₹30 registration fee.
Enrolment was through a biometric smart card, making hospitalisation cashless at empanelled hospitals.
Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY, launched in 2018, subsumed RSBY.

Study next

Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY and how its ₹5 lakh cover differs from RSBY'sPM Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission and what it fundsCentre-state premium sharing in centrally sponsored health schemes

Common traps

Picking 2009 because the scheme is remembered vaguely as a late-2000s launch.
Confusing RSBY with Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY, which came ten years later.

This one is bare launch-year recall. The launch year of the PM Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission is also asked 11 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q11, where the key is 2021.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.