4 J’khand dists to see launch, much yet to be done

The Aadhaar-enabled Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) project will be implemented in four Jharkhand districts starting Tuesday, covering about 44,000 people. The number will go up to about 1.5 lakh by the end of the month, with Ranchi implementing the pilot across 13 schemes.

None of the four districts — Ranchi, Hazaribagh, Ramgarh and Seraikela-Kharsawan — will be implementing the DBT for all 34 schemes selected for the model, as enough beneficiaries are not available for all of them. While Hazaribagh leads with 15 schemes, Ramgarh and Seraikela will implement it in seven and nine, respectively.

The Centre on Monday said the scheme will be formally called DBT and not Direct Cash Transfer. The project launch on Tuesday will be over seven schemes to begin with across 20 districts in the country.

Though significant progress has been made through an eleventh-hour enrolment drive conducted over the past 15 days in Jharkhand, results vary. Realising that none of the districts had managed to have Aadhaar generated number for even 40 per cent of its population, the Information Secretary of the state had on December 10 asked districts to target the beneficiaries of the 34 selected schemes.

Ranchi will launch the project for only two of its 13 schemes on January 1, as 90 per cent Aadhaar generation has been achieved only for payments under the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) and the National Merit Cum Means Scholarships (NMCMS). "We will launch the rest over the course of January. We have a much larger population to cover as compared to other districts, so we are yet to reach saturation levels in some of our schemes," said Ranchi Deputy Commissioner Vinay Kumar Choubey. The NCLP and NMCMS will cover only about 350 students in all for now. In all, the DBT pilot will cover 1.08 lakh people of the district.

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