Direct transfer to media

Direct benefit transfers (DBT) may be one of the most important projects that the United Progressive Alliance is banking on in the run-up to the general elections next year. Mysterious, however, are the ways of the Prime Minister's Office in this regard. Normally and understandably, the media is kept off the radar of inter-ministerial letters. But a letter to the secretaries of various ministries from the prime minister's Principal Secretary Pulok Chaterji, asking them to take steps on the roll out of DBT for liquefied petroleum gas in 20 districts from May 15, found itself in the hands of the media in the form of a statement much before it reached the designated ministries. "Strange, but what we understand is that the letter reached the departments concerned after a statement was issued for the media," a government official said on condition of anonymity.