West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has never shied away from taking on the BJP government at the Centre, and so, when her government became the first in the country to opt out of the National Health Protection Scheme, dubbed ‘Modicare’, it did not come as a big surprise to many.

Banerjee made it clear that the state will not “waste” its hard-earned resources in contributing to the programme when it already has made hospitalisation and medical treatment free of cost for its citizens.

But this is not the first time that the Banerjee administration has rejected the Centre’s initiatives or replaced them with its own. Perhaps the most popular example of this is PM Narendra Modi’s pet project Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. In West Bengal, it is known as the Mission Nirmal Bangla ever since the state issued a circular in April this year.