East Sikkim to pilot Direct Cash Transfer under 10 schemes

GANGTOK, 08 Jan: The Central Government has chosen 43 districts across the country to pilot the Direct Cash Transfer [DCT] System, whereby beneficiaries of 34 identified Centrally Sponsored Schemes [CSS] will have cash benefits [subsidies] transferred directly into their Aadhar Enabled Bank [AEB] Accounts, informed District Collector [East], D Anandan, while speaking to NOW! today. The East district of the State has been chosen as one of the Pilot Districts for introduction of this new system, he confirmed.
Out of the 34 Schemes identified by the Government of India, only 10 schemes are being implemented in the first phase by three Departments. Seven schemes are under the Social Justice, Empowerment and Welfare Department, two by the Human Resource Development Department and one by the Health Care, Human Service and Family Welfare Department, he said and added that at present these were the only schemes to be started in Sikkim, while others will follow in the coming days.
The list of Schemes under Social Justice, Empowerment and Welfare Department are: Post Matric Scholarship for SC Students, Upgradation of Merit for SC Students, Post Matric Scholarship for OBC, Post Matric Scholarship for ST Students, Upgradation of merit for ST Students, Matric Scholarship Scheme for Minority Communities and Merit cum Means Based Scholarship to students of Minority Communities. Under the HRDD the Schemes are National means cum merit scholarship and Incentives for the Girl Child and under the HC, HS and FW Department is Janani Suraksha Yojana.
A District Level meeting with the Implementing Departments of these 10 schemes was held on 20 December, 2012, which was chaired by the DC [East], similarly a State Level meeting of the implementing departments was also chaired by the Chief Secretary the next day.
A step-by-step procedure for rolling out the DCT System has been chalked out. As per this, Block-wise Beneficiaries list of the identified schemes would be prepared by the departments concerned in a prescribed format and have been submitted. A meeting was held on 22 December, 2012 with Block Development Officers [BDOs] of East Sikkim, Lead Bank Managers of State Bank of India [SBI] and departmental representatives, where a copy of the Beneficiaries list has been provided to the BDOs and to the lead bank managers.
Block level camps have already begun in the different blocks of the East District from 27 December, 2012 and will continue till 31 January, 2013. The departmental representatives, UID authorities and Bank Managers of the Block are participating in the camps, the DC [East] stated and added that prior information has been given to the beneficiaries to participate in these camps.
Those beneficiaries who do not have a bank account [the banks have to have core banking facilities, leaving SISCO and SBS], but have a UID have been encouraged to open an Aadhar Enabled Bank account immediately at these camps he said, so that the benefits meant for the beneficiaries can go directly to the banks.
Where a beneficiary hasn’t enrolled for Aadhar yet, the UID authorities would facilitate in enrolling him/her for Aadhar and then open a bank account, he added. And if a beneficiary has both bank account and UID number, then the UID would be seeded in with the bank account to make the bank account Aadhar enabled.
In addition to the camps, the bank managers have been requested to meet the beneficiaries personally and facilitate them in opening an Aadhar Enabled Bank account, before and during the camps, so that the benefits get transferred directly to their accounts. And on completion of the camps, the details of the bank accounts and UID numbers would be noted in the prescribed format and submitted to National Information Centre [NIC] for further uploading the data at the appropriate level, he informed.
It was further informed that the funds for these 10 Schemes brought under the DCT System will be disbursed by the Centre to the State from the month of February.