Aadhaar to be hit as govt snuffs out LPG cash transfer for now

The UPA government’s decision to suspend direct benefit transfer (DBT) for cooking gas can prove to be a setback to its game-changer Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or Aadhaar project. Subsidised LPG cylinder quota hiked from 9 to 12 per year

Updated on: Jan 31, 2014, 10:22:46 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The UPA government’s decision to suspend direct benefit transfer (DBT) for cooking gas can prove to be a setback to its game-changer Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) or Aadhaar project.

The DBT for cooking gas was the biggest grosser for Aadhaar with around 100 million LPG consumers enrolled. Of them about 6.6 crore had got their Aadhaar numbers seeded in bank accounts to become eligible to get the cooking gas subsidy directly.

The petroleum ministry data showed that over Rs 2,000 crore was disbursed as subsidy to LPG consumers till the end of December — thereby giving some fillip to the UIDAI enrolment. As of now, Aadhaar numbers for 570 million have been generated.

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As compared to DBT for cooking gas, the decision to include 28 social sector schemes on Aadhaar based DBT platform has resulted in disbursement of benefits worth Rs 1,200 crore till December end. It was less than one-third of the total funds given to beneficiaries, a planning commission official said.

"The DBT for non-cooking gas schemes has been impressive but in other schemes the pace has been slow," a planning commission official said. "There are a lot of technical issues at the state level which has slowed down the expansion of direct benefit transfer through Aadhaar".

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One of the reasons cited was the inadequate enrolment of people for Aadhaar in areas covered by the Registrar General.

The government has set an year-end deadline for issuing Aadhaar numbers to 1.1 billion eligible residents; 600 million of them will be enrolled by Nandan Nilekani led UIDAI and remaining by the Registrar General.

The UIDAI had enrolled over 400 million and felt that the Census Commissioner’s office was slow in enrolment. It has also proposed to start enrolment in four states which were originally designated as Census Commissioner’s area. The proposal is slated for a discussion in a Cabinet committee. The officials believe that putting DBT for cooking gas on hold will slow down enrolment expansion as there will be no incentive left for people to get the Aadhaar letter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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