The much publicised Direct Cash Transfer (DCT) scheme, as part of the nationwide launch, failed to take off in any of the five districts of the State on Tuesday due to delay in linking of bank accounts of beneficiaries with the Aadhaar number.
Officials now say the scheme will be launched on January 6 in East Godavari and on January 15 in Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Chittoor and Anantapur districts.
Ready for DCT from April
Acknowledging the delay in linking individual bank accounts of beneficiaries with Aadhar number, Finance Minister Anam Ramanarayana Reddy said all the 23 districts of the State would be ready for the cash transfer scheme beginning April.
Officials said that the glitch in linking bank accounts with the Aadhaar number is the failure to bring some key banks like Andhra Bank and the State Bank of Hyderabad under the Aadhar-based platform.
Most beneficiaries have their accounts in these banks. They were brought under the Aadhaar platform only recently on the directions of the Finance Ministry and the RBI and necessary technical adjustments were being made.
Key link
The reason why the scheme can be rolled out in East Godavari within a week is the fact that 90 per cent of bank accounts (ICICI and SBI) are already in the Aadhaar-based platform.
Of the 34 schemes proposed to be included in the Direct Cash Transfer, 25 schemes are directly funded by the Central Ministries and credited to the beneficiaries’ bank accounts.
In the absence of a link between the bank accounts and the Aadhar number, these transactions cannot happen.