By Yatish Yadav - NEW DELHI 28th July 2013 09:06 AM
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The UPA Government’s game changer Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme is turning out to be a casualty of bitter turf war between two institutions tasked for enrolling beneficiaries, hurting government’s plan to target maximum population ahead of the 2014 general election.
And the slow enrolment process has prompted the Prime Minister Office (PMO) to intervene in the matter.
The two institutions -- UIDAI, headed by Nandan Nilekani, and NPR, which comes under Registrar General of India, -- are collecting biometrics of people across the country. While the UIDAI began the process in 2010, the NPR was entrusted with the biometrics coverage of 19 states only last year.
In April, the PMO had summoned both UIDAI and NPR top brass to discuss DBT phase-2 in 78 districts including Rae Bareli and Amethi, parliamentary constituencies of UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi respectively.Government sources said that the UIDAI put the blame squarely on the NPR for delay in issuing Aadhaar numbers claiming that it did not receive the data from NPR to reach out to the targeted beneficiaries.
Surprised by UIDAI’s offensive, the NPR justified the progress saying it received the mandate only in 2012 and is trying hard to cover all the allocated areas.
“The PMO brought truce between the warring institutions and asked both the sides to cooperate and focus on DBT on priority basis. The PMO conveyed the message that the focus of biometrics enrolment is only beneficiaries. The general enrolment process for rest of the population will continue at its own pace,” sources said.
“The NPR already uploaded 10.64 crore enrolled data collected from 19 states to generate Aadhaar number, but the UIDAI was able to execute only 6.20 crore packets till July first week. Data of Almost 3 crore 44 lakh is waiting to be executed by the UIDAI. In fact, they tried to cover up by shifting the blame,” he added.
Moreover, involvement of multiple agencies and departments makes the entire process very complex. He said currently the DBT scheme is being handled by at least nine ministries with the help of district administration and various other departments at local level. With inclusion of old age, disability and widows pension, a total of 29 welfare schemes will be covered under the DBT scheme.
“80 to 90 per cent enrolment is almost complete for the 26 schemes in DBT phase-2. Enrolment for 3 pension schemes may take some time as administration is yet to finalise the list of the beneficiaries.At the same time, Central Public Sector Undertakings, entrusted for biometric enrolment, will have to upload the data of Aadhaar numbers. Hopefully by August-September this entire process will be over,” he said adding that 5 terminals each were put up at tehsil-level for biometrics enrolment to expedite the process.
For most ambitious LPG subsidy through Direct Benefit Transfer, only 50 per cent LPG customers were enrolled for UIDAI Aadhaar.
“There is a lot of ground to be covered as only 14 per cent bank accounts were connected with the unique identification number,” he said.
The PMO is concerned as many beneficiaries’ bank accounts did not connected with their Aadhaar. And in DBT phase 1, only 12 lakh beneficiaries had bank account numbers connected with Aadhaar.