With or without Aadhaar, DBT is here to stay

The Centre will continue to focus on direct transfer of subsidies to beneficiaries, but will review its income tax and payment infrastructure and laws in line with the Supreme Court’s ruling on privacy.

“Aadhaar is not a mandatory requirement for welfare schemes. It is only needed to authenticate the transaction in certain instances or when transfers are made through the Aadhaar payment bridge,” said a senior official, adding that the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme will not be disbanded.

The scope of DBT has widened significantly to include 314 schemes across 51 ministries that use the system in either cash or kind. This includes the vastly popular PAHAL for cooking gas, subsidised foodgrains under the public distribution system and a number of scholarships and pension programmes.

Over the years, the government has transferred over ₹2.17 lakh crore to 35.71 crore beneficiaries and claims savings of over ₹57,000 crore.

“DBT has had many advantages in terms of plugging leakages, wasteful expenses and, more importantly, ensuring that subsidies reach the real beneficiaries,” the official pointed out.

In the next three-six months the government will assess its approach to collecting Aadhaar and biometric data and using it for digital transactions.“Sufficient safeguards will have to be put in to ensure that data of beneficiaries, including biometrics if any, is not used by the government or third party for any other purpose,” said the official.

The Centre will also await the ruling of the Supreme Court, which is hearing pleas on the Aadhaar and its impact on right to privacy. This is also expected to have repercussions on linking the 12-digit biometric number to the Permanent Account Number (PAN), and quoting it in income tax returns and bank accounts.

Aadhaar seeding in most benefit schemes is still low, with just 27.35 per cent of beneficiaries’ data seeded with the 12-digit number. For the 37 Aadhaar-enabled schemes under DBT such as passport, driving licence, PAN and mobile phone connections, seeding with beneficiaries data is higher, but not 100 per cent. Of the 355.51 crore beneficiaries registered for these services, just about 42 per cent or 147.98 crore beneficiaries have seeded their Aadhaar numbers.