Brajesh Kumar, Hindustan Times New Delhi, December 26, 2014
With an aim to weed out ghost beneficiaries in the rural job scheme MGNREGA, the Centre has brought it under the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme covering 300 districts in the first phase.
The finance ministry issued a notification to this effect on Tuesday. Under the DBT platform, wages will be transferred from a single account to the accounts of the beneficiaries using the Aadhaar Payment Bridge System (APBS). The link with the unique Aadhaar number will enable biometric verification of the actual beneficiary and help prevent leakages in the system.
Earlier the BJP government had extended the DBT for LPG subsidy in 54 districts on November 15. While majority of MGNREGA workers have bank accounts into which their wages are directly transferred, the Aadhaar linkage will eliminate fake accounts which, according a recent verification drive, constitutes about 10-12 %.
In the first phase about 300 districts with 80% Aadhaar enrolment will be covered. For enrolling the remaining 20% under Aadhaar, the rural development ministry has asked all the states covered under the programme to review and report the progress on a fortnightly-basis. The DBT scheme was started by the UPA government in 2013 and covered 121 districts and 27 schemes including pensions, and scholarships.