They came in the dozens. Some in white coats, others in plainclothes. The mohalla clinic staffers gathered outside Delhi Secretariat, staged a sit-in protest and in a memorandum to officials pleaded they not be sacked. Some had received phone calls asking them to resign, others said they hadn’t been paid in two months.
Protest was a last resort, to call attention to the insecurity looming over Delhi’s mohalla clinics since March when Health Minister Pankaj Kumar Singh said in no uncertain terms that these urban primary healthcare units, which he termed “just tin boxes”, would neither be rebranded nor continued. CM Rekha Gupta later assured healthcare workers on 16 May, in media glare, “Jab arogya mandir banenge, hum pehle aap logon ko occupy karenge.”
(Upon transition of mohalla clinics to arogya mandirs, we will give you first preference)
Her words did little to quell panic and speculation among doctors, pharmacists, multi-task workers, nurses and attendants employed at the nearly 553 mohalla clinics across Delhi.
Jitendra Kumar, president of Aam Aadmi Mohalla Clinic Union (AAMCU) who was part of the delegation that met minister Singh’s OSD Vaibhav Rikhari on 2 June, told ThePrint, “There were no clear answers. We asked whether existing mohalla clinic staff would be retained in the new arogya mandirs, only vague assurances were given.”
“On salary delays, we were told new officials have been appointed and disbursement will happen soon,” read minutes of the meeting maintained by AAMCU.
In days leading up to the protest Monday, ThePrint visited mohalla clinics in East, South, West, North and Central Delhi, where multiple staffers said they had been handed a ‘one-sided’ MoU with an added clause common across all specialties. Their jobs or positions, it stated, would be valid from 1 April 2025 till 31 March 2026, or until they are replaced by the new staff for the Urban/Ayushman Arogya Mandirs (UAAMs/AAMs), whichever is earlier.
“Is that job security or countdown to my termination,” remarked a pharmacist at a mohalla clinic in Delhi’s South West district who did not wish to be named for fear of reprisal.
Launched in 2015 during Arvind Kejriwal’s second term, the mohalla clinic initiative emerged from ‘sabhas’ (neighbourhood meetings) organised by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), as a way to decentralise primary healthcare. Touted by the previous AAP government as a “healthcare revolution,” these neighbourhood clinics were set up to cater to a population of 10,000 to 15,000 residents, offering accessible and affordable care close to home.
On average, each clinic sees between 70 to 100 patients daily, providing a range of free services that include 212 diagnostic tests through empanelled laboratories and 109 essential medicines from the government’s approved list. The initiative was also praised by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who in a letter to Kejriwal in 2017 said it “may prove to be a good model to scale up UHC [universal health coverage] in India”.
The idea caught on. A prime example was Karnataka’s Namma Clinics, more than a hundred of which were inaugurated by the previous BJP administration led by Basavaraj Bommai in December 2022. The number of Namma Clinics has grown since the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government came to power in May 2023.
Back in Delhi, soon after it assumed charge the newly elected BJP government announced that mohalla clinics would be ‘replaced’ by arogya mandirs—a model intended to integrate existing primary health facilities under the Centre’s flagship Ayushman Bharat scheme.
In an interview with ThePrint in March, Health Minister Pankaj Kumar Singh termed mohalla clinics “fundamentally flawed”. It is not viable for government to continue to run some 240 mohalla clinics which are on “rented properties” or suffered “significant financial losses”.
The minister, however, did not clarify whether mohalla clinics would be phased out entirely, or if only units housed on government land would be considered for transition to arogya mandirs—a move that could affect nearly a third of operational centres.
Coupled with the absence of a concrete timeline for the transition, this is what led mohalla clinic staffers to stage a sit-in protest at the Delhi Secretariat on 2 June.
The government, they said, pledged in March to transform primary healthcare in the capital in its first hundred days. But a hundred days later, confusion outweighs clarity. With unclear MoUs, disrupted routines, and unanswered questions about job security, both patients and staff find themselves navigating a system in transition, with little say in the outcome.
AAMCU’s Kumar told ThePrint Wednesday, “We were recruited into mohalla clinics through an exam. Now, the new government wants to introduce new criteria for hiring. Does that mean the exam we cleared no longer holds value just because the government changed?
“I don’t understand this. Why aren’t we being absorbed in the new arogya mandirs? CM said we would be given priority. But in the newly inaugurated AAMs new staff is being hired while old mohalla clinic staff wasn’t even considered. What are we to make of this?” ThePrint