Districts to ensure recipients have Aadhaar: Centre

Racing to roll out the Direct Cash Transfer (DCT) scheme, the Centre has asked authorities of 43 identified districts to ensure all intended beneficiaries have an Aadhaar number before the launch on January 1, as it will be mandatory for transfer of benefits.

The Planning Commission has issued a circular to the collectors of these districts, spread over 16 states and Union Territories, spelling out the measures to be taken.

“As a first step, you will need to ensure that all the intended beneficiaries have or get an Aadhaar number before commencement” of the programme, the circular said.

It noted the levels of the Aadhaar enrollment as well as number of bank accounts for beneficiaries of these programmes varies from district to district.

The plan of action to commence the rollout of the scheme has to be finalised by the district collector.

The Planning Commission outlined certain actions that need to be completed before commencing the roll out.

These include digitisation of beneficiary data base and seeding of Aadhaar with beneficiary database.

Wherever beneficiaries do not have Aadhaar number, they will have to be enrolled for Aadhaar by the UIDAI Registrar and wherever beneficiaries have bank accounts, it will need to be linked with Aadhaar number.

If beneficiaries do not have bank accounts, they will have to be opened, for which Aadhaar may be used as KYC (know your client), by the lead bank/bank branch. The new bank account will then be seeded with Aadhaar.

A campaign is to be initiated to inform the beneficiaries of the programme and to encourage enrolment in Aadhaar and opening bank account. Robust but easy to access grievance redressal systems would also have to be put in place to mitigate unforeseen hardships, system failures among others and to ensure there is no denial of service to beneficiaries without Aadhaar or bank accounts. Under the programme, 34 schemes would be covered in the first phase.