HYDERABAD: The State saw a 750 per cent increase in the amount of direct benefit transfer (DBT) that failed to be transferred through Aadhaar-based transactions in 2018-19. Non-Aadhaar payments of DBT, on the other hand, saw a 200 per cent increase.
According to an RTI query filed by Hyderabad-based security researcher Srinivas Kodali, in 2017-2018, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare under its National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scheme released Rs 5.24 crore DBT through the Aadhaar mode in the State. Out of which, Rs 61.74 lakh returned as ‘payment failed’. In 2018-2019, Rs 18.8 crore of DBT was paid through Aadhaar. However, the return of failure increased to Rs 4.68 crore — a 750 per cent increase from 2017-2018.
In the case of non-Aadhaar based payments of DBT to Telangana, the amount of failed transactions rose to Rs 36.47 crore in 2018-2019 from Rs 11.95 crore in 2017-18. Wanaparthy had received the most of DBT payments under the NRHM scheme among the State’s districts in 2018-2019. As a result, this also translated into a high number of DBT errors in the district. The reason behind the failure in payment are manifold. The errors are mostly made from the banks’ side. Several Central Ministry memorandums accessed by Express and obtained through Kodali’s RTI show that most of the DBT failures via Aadhaar returns were classified under the overheads ‘accounts closed/transferred’, ‘account holder expired’, ‘invalid account’, ‘account under litigation’ and ‘documents pending for account holder turning major’.
“To enable uninterrupted transfer of benefits under various DBT schemes to beneficiaries, banks are to ensure that they meticulously follow the standard operating procedure for Aadhaar seeding and instructions’ circulars of RBI as well as the advises made by this department on DBT related issue,” said a Ministry of Finance memo dated July 8, 2019.