Progress of Direct Benefit Transfer scheme slow: Paswan

Union Food, Public Distribution and Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Monday said the progress of implementation of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme was slow due to poor banking facilities in the rural areas.

Under the DBT scheme, food subsidy is directly credited to the accounts of the beneficiaries.

"We are going slow as far as the DBT is concerned. Banking facilities are not available everywhere in rural areas. We need to have banking facilities for this," Paswan said, addressing the media on the achievements of his ministry in the last three years.

The minister also said the state governments were asked to implement the scheme.

"It is our dream to have the DBT everywhere. We send money to state government and then its their responsibility to deposit money in accounts of beneficiaries," he said.

Paswan also said that a total of 2.33 crore ration cards were deleted and cancelled after digitization of ration cards, beneficiary records, de-duplication due to Aadhaar seeding.

"In Andhra Pradesh, 9.7 lakh have been deleted, 4.9 lakh in Tamil Nadu, 3.42 lakh in Jharkhand, 21.41 lakh in Karnataka," Paswan said.