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Even as the Opposition escalated its complaint against the Government’s direct cash transfer scheme to the Election Commission, the Prime Minister’s office has expedited the process of direct cash transfer of subsidies.
The Government intends to start this process in 51 districts from January 1.
In this regard, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Pulok Chatterji has written a letter to nine Secretaries belonging to Central Government Ministries and Departments. These ministries include Petroleum and Rural Development. This move follows the first meeting of the National Committee on Direct Cash Transfers (DCT) chaired by the Prime Minister on November 26.
The letter reads, “I would request you to get down to the immediate task of operationalising Direct Cash Transfers in the identified schemes in your Department. The emphasis should be on having a seamless and trouble free rollout of the programme, first in 51 districts and subsequently as per the agreed rollout plan.”
Chatterji assured that concerns relating to availability of banking infrastructure for making this work and the financial and accounting procedures required would be addressed by the Financial Inclusion and Technology Committees.
list of beneficiaries
“The main issue which you need to focus on is ensuring that you have a complete list of beneficiaries in digitised form seeded with Aadhaar numbers for your schemes,” he added.
He also said that digitisation of beneficiaries’ database is critical for rolling out Direct Cash Transfers and maximum effort on this needs to be put in at the state and district levels.
“You will be provided necessary assistance for this by the Unique Identification Authority of India and the Department of Information Technology,” he informed. The implementation Committees in each ministry have been directed to meet on a weekly basis to complete the task of digitisation.
In a separate letter to the UIDAI Chairman, the PMO has asked the Technology Committee, headed by the UIDAI chairman, to consider providing dedicated individuals to each of the nine implementing ministries to assist them in their work on digitising databases.
In another letter to the Department of Financial Services, whose Secretary heads the Financial Inclusion Committee, the PMO has requested holding a meeting immediately to oversee opening of bank accounts by the beneficiaries with ease, seeding of bank accounts with Aadhaar numbers and ensuring that the Business Correspondents’ operations are made suitably flexible so they are easily accessible to beneficiaries wherever necessary.
Sops for biz correspondents
The Department of Financial Services has been also asked to design an incentive package for Business Correspondents who will dispense cash directly to beneficiaries.
The Department will also need to resolve issues of utilising the existing Post Offices network to undertake Direct Cash Transfers, the letter mentioned.
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