Niti Ayog asked to bring more public schemes under DBT

In a move to put a check on pilferage of Central funds by states, Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government has asked the Niti Ayog to bring more social welfare programmes under the ambit of direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme.

According to sources, the decision has been taken after examining the beneficiaries’ data of different social welfare schemes provided by the states. The move aims at identifying the actual number of beneficiaries by eliminating the ‘inflated’ figures by the states to provide benefits of government’s schemes to every needy in the country, the source added.

“Given that in the country, identification of poor is done by state governments, which is based on information from below poverty line (BPL) censuses and it has been noticed that the BPL population remains static in states even after several years. In this way, a huge amount of public money go into vain,” the source said.

The source added, “It has also been noticed that states maintain an inflated data of social scheme beneficiaries and when more number of social welfare schemes would come under the ambit of DBT, the benefits would reach to actual people directly.”

Since the DBT scheme is Aadhaar-linked, chances of duplicity will be negligible as is happening in case of LPG subsidy. 

Taking a cue from the success of the LPG subsidy, the Centre introduced direct benefit transfer of fertiliser subsidy to farmers on a pilot basis in a few districts from this year. The Centre spends Rs 3.8 lakh crore on subsidies for different social welfare schemes.