Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, June 22: Union Cabinet Secretary, Pradeep Kumar Sinha today asked the States to ensure faster rollout of the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) by taking up Aadhar seeding in a mission mode. He called for setting time-lines to ensure cent percent seeding, which he said requires lot of work by the States.
The Union Cabinet Secretary reviewed the progress of DBT and Aadhar seeding with Union Secretaries, Chief Secretaries and Finance Secretaries of various States and the Union Territories through a video-conference.
Finance Secretary, J&K, Navin Kumar Choudhary, Commissioner Secretary, IT, Sanjeev Verma, Secretary Education & Tourism, Farooq Ahmad Shah, Secretary Social Welfare, Sajad Ahmad Khan, Special Secretary to Chief Secretary, Arshid Ayub and other officers of the State Government also participated in the video-conference.
The meeting was informed that 492 schemes and 37 services of 68 Union Ministries and departments have been identified as DBT applicable where the financial benefits are directly transferred into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries. It was told that out of 492 schemes 290 have already been brought on the Government of India’s DBT portal while the remaining 202 schemes will be linked with the portal by March 2018.
The meeting was further informed that DBT cells have already been created in 76 central ministries, 28 states and 7 union territories.
To ensure speedy progress on DBT, the State Governments were requested to ensure that all individual bank accounts are seeded with Aadhar and mobile numbers.
It was informed that unless individual bank accounts are not seeded with Aadhar and mobile number, Government will not be able to transfer entitled benefits through DBT under various schemes to the beneficiaries. Emphasis was laid to prioritize issuance of Aadhar cards by holding of camps in the districts and also in the educational institutions to achieve the targets of seeding.
The banks were advised to utilize existing banking channels and other media communication channels to inform the account holders in regard to Aadhar and mobile seeding.
Finance Secretary, J&K briefed the Union Cabinet Secretary on the progress of Aadhar enrolment and status of connectivity and reach of internet, mobile and banking in the State. To fast track completion of Aadhaar enrolment process in J&K, the Finance Secretary requested the Union Cabinet Secretary to support the State Government in eliminating dark spots viz-a-viz connectivity and to also take up with the Electronics Corporation of India Ltd (ECIL), the issues regarding re-starting of Aadhar generation by the vendors for the left out population.
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