Refuting claims of lower budgetary allocation for healthcare, the Health Minister claimed that the government had taken into account past expenditures against allocated funds before deciding this year's allocation.

Bihar government on 9 March asserted that it was committed to providing better health services to the people of state by making adequate funds available for the purpose. Replying to a short notice question of JD (U) member Shyam Rajak in state Assembly, Health Minister (in charge) Nand Kishore Yadav said the government was making concerted efforts for strengthening its internal infrastructure so the common people could get better health care.

Refuting the claim that budgetary allocation to health department was less, Mr Yadav said the government allocated a sum of Rs 8,234.69 crore to the department during 2016-17 but the actual expenditure was Rs 5 ,551.08 crore. He said, by considering the actual expenditure, the government allocated a sum of Rs 7,001.5 crore to the department for 2017-18 and it was revised later to Rs 7,533.57 crore, 27 per cent higher than the preceding year.

He said, a sum of Rs 7,793.81 crore had been earmarked for health department during 2018-19, 3.5 per cent higher than the revised budget for 2017-18. Earlier, Mr Rajak said that the size of state budged increased from Rs 23,885 crore during 2004-05 to more than Rs 1.76 lakh crore but on the other hand, budgetary outlay was being reduced for health department. He said, the budgetary outlay for health department was reduced by 15.5 per cent during 2017-18 in comparison to the preceding year. He said the budgetary allocation had reduced further by nearly 4 per cent during 2018-19.