300 Vacancies, Underutilised Funds, Budget Gaps: Parliament Panel Pulls Up Health Ministry

Last Updated:April 17, 2026, 13:41 IST

The health ministry is running 380 posts short against a sanctioned strength of 1,467 — and the committee is not satisfied with the pace of filling them.

The parliamentary panel has pulled up India’s health ministry for leaving hundreds of posts vacant, receiving far less money than it needs and underutilising allocated funds — warning that the gaps are “likely to adversely affect the efficiency of policy implementation, programme monitoring and administrative functioning."

The Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare, in its 172nd Report presented to the Rajya Sabha, reviewed the Ministry’s demands for grants for 2026-27 and found the problems deep enough to demand urgent government action.

Hundreds of posts, persistent gaps

The health ministry is running 380 posts short against a sanctioned strength of 1,467 — and the committee is not satisfied with the pace of filling them. While the number has edged down from 428 in 2024, the panel warned this progress is insufficient.

The vacancies cut across all three staff groups. In 2025, Group A recorded 46 vacancies against a sanctioned strength of 316, Group B had 190 vacancies against 666, and Group C had 144 vacancies against 485. The committee has asked the ministry to convene pending departmental promotion committees and expedite recruitment through UPSC and SSC at all levels.

The committee pointed to a troubling pattern driving these numbers: attrition remains high at the junior-most levels — assistant section officers and multi-tasking staff — while newly recruited candidates are resigning or not joining after selection. It has asked the ministry to analyse the reasons behind this trend and take corrective steps to improve retention.

The panel also pushed back against the ministry’s growing reliance on temporary hiring. “The core and long-term functions should be supported by regular staff to ensure institutional continuity, accountability and capacity building," the report stated, recommending the ministry focus on “filling up vacancies, improving manpower planning and forecasting, and strengthening its human resource capacity to ensure effective implementation and monitoring of health and family welfare programmes."

Adding to the concern, the panel found that the ministry has never conducted a unified workload analysis to assess whether its sanctioned strength matches current responsibilities. It flagged that “the department has not undertaken a comprehensive workload analysis to assess whether the existing sanctioned strength is adequate to align with its expanding responsibilities," and recommended that it “conduct a scientific manpower and workload assessment at the earliest and rationalise the sanctioned strength accordingly and subsequently, undertake special drive to fill up the vacant posts."

Budget gap widens

On the financial side, the gap between projected demand and actual allocation has widened significantly. The ministry projected a requirement of Rs 1.22 lakh crore for financial year 2026-27 but received a budget estimate of Rs 1.01 lakh crore — a shortfall exceeding 17 per cent.

The committee noted that “the Budget Estimates have consistently been lower than the proposed/projected demands, reflecting partial acceptance of the Department’s requests by the Ministry of Finance," and warned that “the persistent gap between proposed demand and BE may constrain the expansion of health programmes."

The impact is being felt most acutely in key schemes.

The committee specifically flagged allocations for the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), Pradhan Mantri Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (PMSSY), PM-Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission (PM-ABHIM), and tertiary care services as areas where the funding gap is most consequential. It recommended that the ministry “engage more proactively with the Ministry of Finance during the pre-budget consultations to ensure that allocations are better aligned with projected needs, especially for critical schemes such as NACO, PMSSY, PM-ABHIM, and tertiary care services."

This pattern is not new. In the financial year 2025-26, the budget estimate of Rs 95,957 crore was reduced to Rs 92,925 crore at the revised estimate stage, with the reduction primarily affecting NACO, PMSSY, PM-ABHIM, tertiary care, and establishment heads.

While the financial year 2026-27 budget shows a nominal 6 per cent increase over the previous year, the committee said the real gain is negligible. It observed that this increase is “effectively neutralised by inflation averaging around 5 per cent and population growth, and is insufficient to meet the rising healthcare demands of the nation." The committee noted that “the effective increase is marginal."

With India’s GDP growing at 7.3 per cent in financial year 2025-26, the panel argued that health budget growth must be significantly higher to meet the National Health Policy target of raising public health expenditure to 2.5 per cent of GDP, recommending that “the year-on-year budget allocation growth should be significantly more than the rate of 7.3 per cent, must be around 14-15 per cent."

Repeated cuts undermine programmes

The report also flagged a recurring pattern of mid-year cuts at the Revised Estimate stage — Rs 6,600 crore in financial year 2022-23, Rs 8,500 crore in 2023-24, and Rs 3,000 crore in 2025-26.

The committee warned that “frequent mid-year reductions at the Revised Estimate (RE) stage have disrupted the continuity and momentum of long-term health initiatives," and specifically called for protecting NACO, PMSSY, PM-ABHIM, and Tertiary Care projects “from being disproportionately derailed by mid-year financial cuts."

Stressing the importance of stable funding, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the committee said “consistent and uninterrupted funding is non-negotiable for building nationwide healthcare resilience."

Underutilisation raises red flags

Even more concerning, the ministry has not been able to fully utilise even its reduced allocations. As of January 31, 2026, only 75.70 per cent of the revised estimate had been spent — with two months still remaining in the financial year. The committee noted that except for 2023-24, actual expenditure has consistently remained below the revised estimates, which themselves are lower than the budget estimates.

The committee expressed “deep concern over the chronic issue of underutilisation of funds" and warned that “there is a risk of skewed expenditure in a particular quarter of a financial year, which may compromise efficiency and value for money."

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