State well placed to meet Aadhaar norm

The Centre’s latest move of making Aadhaar number mandatory for beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) will not pose any problem to Tamil Nadu, according to officials in the Rural Development Department.

Of 89 lakh “active” beneficiaries, 84 lakh have Aadhaar numbers, representing 94 per cent. Overall, around 1.17 crore beneficiaries have registered under the scheme, of whom 93.4 lakh have Aadhaar numbers.

Explaining that three stages are involved before the system of Aadhaar-Enabled Payment (AEP) is implemented, the officials point out that the work of linking the job card numbers with Aadhaar numbers was completed in respect of these 84 lakh beneficiaries.

Secondly, the bank account details of the beneficiaries have to be tied with Aadhaar. The State has been making the payment to the beneficiaries through bank accounts for over four years. By holding special camps for the beneficiaries, the authorities obtained the consent of 42 lakh persons for linking their bank accounts with the Aadhaar. This had to be done as they have more than one bank account.

Thirdly, the verification of data is being made by officials of the Central government in New Delhi. So far, 50.75 lakh beneficiaries in the State are being covered under the AEP, the TN officials say, adding that all over the country, 3.84 crore beneficiaries have been roped in under the AEP. The officials hope that the Centre’s stipulation of covering all the beneficiaries in the State by the end of March can be adhered to without difficulty.

As for the original target of 31.5 crore person days set by the Centre for the State, the officials say even now, 29 crore person days have been covered.

Revised target

Recently, the target has been revised to 35 crore person days. By December-end, 11 districts including Pudukottai, Madurai and Dharmapuri have exceeded their respective targets with regard to labour. If the State is declared drought-hit, the proposal for increasing the days of work from 100 days to 150 days will get the nod from the Centre.

Till now, about two lakh beneficiaries have been employed for 100 days.