The ₹90,000 crore savings due to the implementation of Aadhaar is enough to fund three other schemes of the size of Ayushman Bharat, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley wrote in a blog post on Sunday.
“The Government estimates that ₹90,000 crore have been saved in the last few years till March 2018 by the use of Aadhaar,” Mr. Jaitley said.
“Several duplicate beneficiaries, non-existent beneficiaries and fake beneficiaries have been eliminated. The Digital Dividend Report prepared by the World Bank estimates that India can save ₹77,000 crore every year by the use of Aadhaar.”
Mr. Jaitley said that in the last 28 months, over 122 crore Aadhaar numbers have been issued, covering 99% of India’s population above the age of 18.
“Many state support schemes, including some by the DBT mechanism have been linked to Aadhaar,” he said.
“22.80 crore of PAHAL and Ujjwala beneficiaries are given cooking gas subsidies through DBT in their Aadhaar linked bank accounts. 58.24 crore ration card holders stand linked. 10.33 crore MGNREGA card holders get wage payment through DBT in their bank accounts. So do the 1.93 crore beneficiaries and other beneficiaries of the national social assistance programme. The Income Tax Department has already linked 21 crore PAN card holders with their Aadhaar numbers.”
Mr. Jaitley said 63.52 crore bank accounts have been linked with the unique identity as of December 15, 2018.
The number of subsidy transactions are about 425 crore. The total subsidies transferred through Aadhaar now equal ₹169,868 crore, he said.
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