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The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s flagship Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) scheme had made very slow progress in the first three-and-a-half months since its launch at the beginning of the current calendar year, sources said on Monday. The DBT scheme could transfer just Rs 1,285 to an Aadhaar-seeded account on an average. It has seen only 35 million transactions so far.
The government estimated that about 1.6 million beneficiaries would be covered under Phase-I of the scheme, rolled out in 43 districts. Of these, about 1.3 million have been identified by banks, but only 550,000 of them have reported their Aadhaar numbers to banks. In total, the scheme transferred only Rs 45 crore to Aadhaar-seeded accounts of beneficiaries.
A finance ministry official, however, clarified that transactions worth Rs 45 crore carried out by banks in the past three-and-a-half months were only towards Aadhaar-enabled accounts and that the total amount transferred by the central government ministries to various beneficiaries was much higher. “The data for non-Aadhaar-linked accounts have not been captured. As more accounts are seeded with Aadhaar numbers, the figure would go up,” said the official. He added though the Unique Identification Authority of India claimed that in most of these districts, Aadhaar penetration was more than 80 per cent, the fact was that 80 per cent of bank accounts were not seeded with Aadhaar in January. However, there had been an improvement since then.
About Rs 35 lakh were transferred to the accounts of 2,000 beneficiaries on the first day of the launch of the DBT scheme. That worked out to an average transfer of Rs 1,750 per beneficiary. The scheme, which replaces various kinds of subsidies with direct cash transfers to the accounts of beneficiaries, will be extended to 78 more districts and three more schemes in July. This will take the scheme to 121 districts covering 29 schemes in about the next three months.
DBT of LPG subsidy would also be rolled out in 20 districts from May 15. By October, it will be transferred through DBT in the whole country. Oil companies have prepared a database of 140 million people with LPG connections and bank accounts. The government is planning to give advance subsidy to the beneficiaries so that they don’t have to shell out anything from their own pocket. “The fear is that if the beneficiary has to give it from his pocket while buying cooking gas at the market price, he may not see any benefit in it. Before DBT, they were already getting subsidised cylinders from the market. So, some advance has to be given,” the official explained.
Consumers will get about Rs 4,000 a year in cash from the government, which will be used to buy LPG at market price of Rs 901.50 per 14.2-kg cylinder. At present, each consumer is entitled to nine cylinders at subsidised price of Rs 410.50.
