PMO cracks the whip for meeting DBT deadlines

With government departments slipping on direct benefit transfer targets during the last three months, the Prime Minister's Office on Tuesday asked all central departments to get cracking for the next phase beginning July 1.

With government departments slipping on direct benefit transfer targets during the last three months, the Prime Minister's Office on Tuesday asked all central departments to get cracking for the next phase beginning July 1.

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had last week conceded to the national committee on DBT that the project had faced some unanticipated difficulties but cleared its expansion to 78 more districts by July 1 and agreed to provide LPG subsidy in 20 districts from 15 May.

Principal secretary to PM Pulok Chatterji followed up on the decisions, telling secretary-rank civil servants who head the departments, to start work "without any delay." "There is adequate time to prepare for the next phase of rollout," a PMO statement said.

The communication asked them to digitise beneficiary database and work on tweaking processes to ensure direct transfer of funds to beneficiary accounts and real time monitoring. The DBT project also faces considerable problems since it is a difficult task to link each beneficiary of social welfare schemes to an Aadhaar number.