BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha government will soon engage ‘bank mitras’ to resolve issues of Subhadra applicants who have been facing difficulties in linking mobile and Aadhaar numbers and making their accounts DBT-enabled.
Sources said the Women and Child Development department is unable to process around 7.68 lakh applications for release of assistance under the scheme owing to non-compliance, procedural and technical issues and delay in field verification.
Even as the flagship scheme achieved a milestone of assisting 80.45 lakh beneficiaries so far, a staggering 5.6 lakh verified applications are pending for release of assistance simply because they are either not DBT-enabled or not properly linked to the mobile and Aadhaar number of the respective applicants.
Besides, reverification of 2.08 lakh applications, which were rejected on the basis of land area, family owning a four-wheeler or one of the family members is a government employee is yet to be completed.
Deputy chief minister Pravati Parida said the ‘bank mitras’ will help over five lakh women applicants resolve the issues with their bank accounts. “The bank mitras attached to bank branches for helping SHGs will now facilitate Subhadra applicants to resolve their issues. Banks have also been asked to sort out procedural issues, if any, as soon as possible,” she told The New Indian Express.
Although the state government had assured to reverify 2.67 lakh applications rejected earlier on a war-footing with the help of revenue inspectors, only 22 per cent (58,740 women beneficiaries) of them have been reverified so far and received the assistance.
“Some of the applications were rejected only because the government data shows them owners of more than five acres of irrigated land and paddy has been sold in their name in mandis despite the fact that they do not own the land. The verification is taking time and we are hopeful that it will be completed by next month,” Parida said.
The deputy chief minister said over 80 lakh women beneficiaries receiving more than Rs 4,000 crore financial assistance as part of the first installment under the largest only-women welfare scheme is a history itself in a state like Odisha.
“The number of selected applicants stood at 1.04 crore after preliminary verification of applications received so far. Now we have around 23.55 lakh applicants left to receive the aid. They will be covered in the fourth and final phase,” she said.