The ambit of PM Narendra Modi's pet scheme, Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT), will be doubled by March next year with the Centre now aiming to bring as many as 147 schemes under its purview from the 74 at present.
A senior government official said that the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is closely monitoring the ambitious target even as 71 out of the 84 central ministries and departments have now opened their internal DBT cells which have identified the said schemes to be transitioned to the DBT platform by March, 2017. The Prime Minister in the recent past has spoken about the Rs.28,000 cr savings through the DBT and the government expects that the savings figure could touch Rs.1 lakh cr with the scheme's ambit being extended. Towards this end, all states were recently also told to open DBT cells.
The Centre is enthused as almost all states, including many opposition states like Odisha, were appreciative of the DBT project at the recent inter-state council meeting chaired by the PM. “West Bengal had a concern that lack of banks in rural areas would be a big challenge to DBT and Mamata Bannerjee complained of the stiff timelines saying it should be ensured that people should not be left out. The PM has assured that the postal network coming on the DBT platform for banking would solve that issue,“ a top government official said.
The Centre will again be making a fervent pitch to states for the same at the first-ever national DBT conference on July 22 where Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha will be speaking to state DBT coordinators and appealing to them to start Internal DBT Cells in all states as well as brief them on the proposed `Servam' project which aims at a national-level IT platform to track and improve all subsidies availed at the family level. This will be followed up at a NITI Aayog meeting with all state Chief Secretaries on July 27.
A senior government official said that the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is closely monitoring the ambitious target even as 71 out of the 84 central ministries and departments have now opened their internal DBT cells which have identified the said schemes to be transitioned to the DBT platform by March, 2017. The Prime Minister in the recent past has spoken about the Rs.28,000 cr savings through the DBT and the government expects that the savings figure could touch Rs.1 lakh cr with the scheme's ambit being extended. Towards this end, all states were recently also told to open DBT cells.
The Centre is enthused as almost all states, including many opposition states like Odisha, were appreciative of the DBT project at the recent inter-state council meeting chaired by the PM. “West Bengal had a concern that lack of banks in rural areas would be a big challenge to DBT and Mamata Bannerjee complained of the stiff timelines saying it should be ensured that people should not be left out. The PM has assured that the postal network coming on the DBT platform for banking would solve that issue,“ a top government official said.
The Centre will again be making a fervent pitch to states for the same at the first-ever national DBT conference on July 22 where Cabinet Secretary PK Sinha will be speaking to state DBT coordinators and appealing to them to start Internal DBT Cells in all states as well as brief them on the proposed `Servam' project which aims at a national-level IT platform to track and improve all subsidies availed at the family level. This will be followed up at a NITI Aayog meeting with all state Chief Secretaries on July 27.
No comments:
Post a Comment