Completion of Aadhaar enrolment, opening of bank accounts for all beneficiaries of welfare schemes and seeding of unique identity numbers with the bank accounts in the State is likely to take over six months, notwithstanding the government plans to wind up the work over the next two months.
Official sources told The Hindu that it would take nothing less than four months to complete the exercise in all respects even in the five districts -- Anantapur, Chittoor, East Godavari, Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy -- where the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme was launched. It would take much more time to finish the work in the remaining 18 districts in the State, sources stated.
LPG linkage
Though the February 15 deadline for linking Aadhaar with the supply of subsidised domestic LPG cylinders has been postponed by a month, apprehensions among people, particularly the LPG consumers, are far from addressed. People’s woes in enrolling for Aadhaar and getting the UID cards are continuing unabated, even as the government has promised to set up over 2,000 new enrolment centres in the State, including 300 in Hyderabad.
The Civil Supplies Department authorities, who are monitoring the Aadhaar exercise, stated that out of over 8.5 crore population in the State, 6.52 crore were enrolled for Aadhaar cards and about 5.26 crore of them were allotted UID numbers. However, only about 60 per cent of them have received Aadhaar cards so far due to delay in generation of cards and their despatch through the Postal Department.
A far cry
Linking of UID numbers with the subsidised domestic LPG consumers is a far cry as only about 8.5 lakh out of 52 lakh consumers in the five DBT districts were linked with Aadhaar so far, mostly in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy districts till last week.
Seeding of UID numbers with bank accounts for cash transfer of subsidies in welfare schemes is, however, completed in respect of only half of the beneficiaries in the DBT districts. Of the 2.27 crore entries for various welfare schemes in these districts, only 2.19 crore have bank accounts and 1.9 crore have Aadhaar enrolment. But, seeding has been done only for 1.53 crore of them till January-end. The banks are planning to ensure total financial inclusion in the DBT districts with the help of banking correspondent agents (BCAs) and common service centres (CSCs) to the uncovered population in 1,182 gram panchayats out of 4,000 in the DBT districts, excluding Hyderabad.
