The Union Budget for 2012-13 today reinforced the importance of Uniquie Identification programme, as the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee approved an outlay of around Rs 1,450 crore for Aadhaar.
Finance Minister also increased the rollout target for Aadhaar card to an additional 400 million people. The enrolments into the Aadhaar system have already crossed 200 million.
“The Aadhaar platform is now ready to support the payments of MGNREGA; old age, widow and disability pensions; and scholarships directly to the beneficiary accounts in selected areas,” said the Finance Minister.
Going ahead, the minister also added that Aadhaar will be an integral part of several welfare schemes as the recommendations of the task force headed by Nandan Nilekani on IT strategy for direct transfer of subsidy have been accepted. Aadhar will now be used for cash transfers of payment of subsidies for food, fertilisers, kerosene, and other Welfare schemes.
Accepting the recommendations of the task force will silence some of the segments in the government that a few months back was being questioned.
Based on these recommendations, a mobile-based Fertiliser Management System (mFMS) has been designed to provide end-to-end information on the movement of fertilisers and subsidies, from the manufacturer to the retail level. This will be rolled out nationwide during 2012. Direct transfer of subsidy to the retailer, and eventually to the farmer will be implemented in subsequent phases. This step will benefit 120 million farmer families, while reducing expenditure on subsidies by curtailing misuse of fertilisers.
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Aadhaar will also be used for the distribution of LPG. All the three state-owned oil marketing companies have launched LPG transparency portals to improve customer service and reduce leakage. A pilot project for selling LPG at market price and reimbursement of subsidy directly into the beneficiary’s bank account is being conducted in Mysore. A similar pilot project on direct transfer of subsidy for kerosene into the bank accounts of beneficiaries has been initiated in Alwar district of Rajasthan.
The FM also agreed that these pilot projects have shown that substantial economies in subsidy outgo can be achieved by the use of Aadhaar platform. "It will be our endeavour to scale up and roll out these Aadhaar enabled payments for various government schemes in at least 50 selected districts within the next six months," he added.