As the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) gears up for a possible fourth term in office, the party released their manifesto for the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections on Monday, featuring 15 key "Kejriwal ki guarantee." The promises or 'guarantees,' as the party calls it, ranged from employment for youth to 24/7 clean drinking water and "world class" roads.
Health has emerged as a significant area of focus once again, with "free medical treatment for senior citizens, whether at government or private hospitals" as a key promise. However, it was notably silent on tackling air pollution in the city, which was a key promise earlier.
The AAP government has been pushing health as one of their success stories since they first came to power. They have consistently allocated a budget of over 10 per cent of the aggregate expenditure, for health since their first budget, according to the Reserve Bank of India's analysis of state finances, making Delhi one of the few states to meet the target of 8 per cent of total budget allocation for health recommended by the National Health Policy.
In fact, since they assumed office, health allocation saw a steady upward swing — from Rs 4,787 crore in 2015-16 to a peak of Rs 9,934 crore in 2021-22.
However, data reveals that the allocation saw a steady decline in the following years. It was reduced to Rs 9,769 crore in 2022-23, and further reduced to Rs 9,742 crore in 2023-24 and Rs 8,685 crore in 2024-25.
Considering the importance that health holds for the AAP, First Check looked at some of the poll promises related to health the party had made ahead of the 2020 elections, to understand if the government has been able to deliver on them.
Here's the status of these promises.
PROMISE #1:
Affordable, accessible, and advanced healthcare facilities for all households in Delhi.
The AAP has been building multiple super specialty hospitals in Delhi, of which three are ready. Till 2020, two hospitals including Ambedkar Nagar Hospital and Burari Hospital were built. Indira Gandhi Superspeciality Hospital was built in 2021.
As per the economic survey 2023-24, the project of building 11 hospitals is ongoing in Delhi.
"Today, under the Delhi Government, there are 38 hospitals where treatment is provided free of cost to more than 81,000 daily OPD patients and 65,806 IPD patients monthly. In 2014, Delhi's Government hospitals had 9,523 beds. Now, Delhi's Government hospitals have 13,708 beds, enabling us to care for 1.5 times more patients. We have extended the timings of every hospital's OPD counter and provided a receptionist at each counter," Atishi, who was then finance minister of Delhi, said while presenting the latest budget.
PROMISE #2:
Extensive on-ground reach with 520+ Mohalla Clinics, providing citywide coverage and serving 60,000 patients daily.
In August 2023, Arvind Kejriwal today said that a total of 533 Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinics are functional in Delhi. "A total of 533 Mohalla clinics are functional in Delhi at present, 512 of these operate in morning shift while 21 are functional in evening shift," Kejriwal said in his address.
In her budget speech in March 2024, Atishi had also said that these clinics serve 64,000 people everyday.
So it would appear that the government has been able to fulfil these promises.
However, decrease in footfall of patients, lack of supply of medicines, fake lab tests and the issue of 'ghost patients' have been expensively reported.
In fact, the target of over 520 mohalla clinics is significantly less than what the government had promised earlier. In their manifesto ahead of the 2015 elections, AAP had promised to create 900 new Primary Health Centres, and after a year, Kejriwal had promised 1,000 mohalla clinics in the city.
This promise was also repeated later, and still lives on in the archives of the party's website, that they would increase the number of mohalla clinics to 1,000 during the 2020-2021 period.
PROMISE #3:
Reduce air pollution to one-third of current levels
Dangerous air pollution levels in Delhi has become a yearly headline, with no real respite in sight. While the party had earlier promised to reduce pollution, their latest manifesto is conspicuously silent on air pollution this time.
Even this earlier promise has not been met. Instead of pollution being reduced, Delhi saw record levels of pollution this winter.
According to data from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Delhi's PM2.5 levels in 2024 reached their highest since 2019. By December 25, 2024, the city recorded a PM2.5 concentration of 104.08 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3), more than two-and-a-half times the safe limit of 40µg/m3. This was the worst level since 2019, when Delhi had an average PM2.5 concentration of 105.57µg/m3.
In addition to PM2.5, which signals combustion-related pollution, PM10 levels—representing dust pollution—were also elevated compared to previous years, CPCB data showed.
First Check contacted multiple representatives of AAP for a response, however, none of them responded to our request for comments till the publishing of this piece.
This story is done in collaboration with First Check, which is the health journalism vertical of DataLEADS.
