'Servam project on anvil for direct benefits transfer': Jayant Sinha

Servam is a comprehensive platform to take together the elements of Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar identification database and mobile phones

Pushing ahead with its direct benefits transfer initiative, government would soon roll out a platform in the union territories to keep a tab on subsidies and their delivery.

Union Minister Jayant Sinha on Friday said the government is working on Servam, a comprehensive platform to take together the elements of Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar identification database and mobile phones.

Delivering the valedictory address at the national workshop on the Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT), he said the platform would look to have a single interface for beneficiaries and their providers to be able to deliver public benefits in a rational objective and convenient manner.

"... As we are working on this our sense is that we will be rolling it out first in the union territories which we are going to do very shortly," the Minister of State for Civil Aviation said here.

Sinha, who was till recently the Minister of State for Finance, noted that Servam would become core of the DBT portal.

Emphasising that it would be a voluntary architecture, he said the government is taking a "pull approach and not a push approach".

"All of the services will be available through Servam but states can utilise whatever they feel will be useful to them... Pulling this as they need it," he noted.

Speaking at the event earlier in the day, the Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said the DBT scheme, with the help of Aadhaar, has led to savings of about Rs 36,500 crore of both state as well as central funds in two years.