Finance minister P Chidambaram will review the status of the much-hyped direct cash transfer programme with all stakeholders on Tuesday.
General elections in India are scheduled for 2014, and the Congress-led UPA government is banking on the success of the direct cash transfer, which was
on January 1 rolled out in a few districts as a pilot project.
While banks have been asked to feed in the Aadhaar number of beneficiaries for smooth implementation of the subsidy scheme, sources said that in many cases this number was yet to be included in bank accounts, which is leading to ‘some glitches.’
“While the programme has been launched in just a few districts, the government wants a status report on how it is working on the ground level,” a senior government official said.
Pending issues and glitches are being addressed. “It is natural that there would be some problems and we are ready to identify those and sort them out,” the official said.
Under the direct transfer scheme, the subsidy amount is directly deposited in the bank accounts of the beneficiaries, which is expected to plug leakages. The Centre is also looking at a proposal to use a similar route to hand out the annual subsidy on LPG connections to connection-holders’ bank accounts.