Government saves over Rs 27000 crore via DBT and Aadhaar

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has chaired a review meeting on the progress of Aadhaar and Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) programmes. The government is estimated to have saved over Rs 27,000 crore by cash transfers for payments to beneficiaries under various welfare schemes in the last two years.  In 2015-16, fund transfers worth Rs 61,000 crore was done through DBT to over 30 crore beneficiaries. This includes over Rs 25,000 crore in MGNREGS and over Rs 21,000 crore in PAHAL (for cooking gas).

Further,over 1.6 crore bogus ration cards have been deleted, resulting in savings of about Rs 10,000 crore. Similarly, 3.5 crore duplicate beneficiaries were weeded out in the PAHAL scheme, resulting in savings of over Rs 14,000 crore in 2014-15 alone. Moreover, in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) too, a saving of Rs 3,000 crore (roughly 10 per cent) has been estimated in 2015-16. Besides, Several States and Union Territories too have achieved significant savings through DBT. Meanwhile, the government is now also working on a unique identifier for non government organisations (NGOs). Over 71,000 NGOs are now registered with the NGO Darpan portal maintained by NITI Aayog.

In order to ensure that the targeted beneficiaries receive their benefits well in time, the Prime Minister emphasized the importance of creating a platform that is error-free. He also cautioned that beneficiaries should not be inconvenienced in the implementation of DBT and Aadhaar for various schemes. Further, he said that the officials must test their systems carefully before rolling them out on a large scale.