DBT scheme misused by Maharashtra Govt. officials

MUMBAI, INDIA: The Maharashtra Government will add six more districts to the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) project. The six districts include Aurangabad, Latur, Jalna, Gondia, Jalgaon and Ratnagiri. The first phase of the DBT project was this year in six other districts.

There have been instances where the government officials have witnessed the misuse of this scheme, especially by officers with vested interests and bogus bank account holders.

"We had 3.20 lakh beneficiaries under various schemes including post- and pre-matric scholarships and the Sanjay Gandhi pension scheme in the six districts where the project was launched in January this year. Ninety per cent of the beneficiaries are from the social justice department as most of the scholarships to the SC/ST/OBC students are distributed through it," a Hindustan Times report quoted a Mantralaya official, as saying.

"However the department could generate Aadhaar-linked bank accounts of only 1 lakh students. We suspect that officials are wary as they have vested interests in the money, and are thus dilly-dallying the implementation," added the official.

At a time, when the Aurangabad district collector made Aadhaar compulsory, many elderly persons, who were supposed to get a monthly pension under the Sanjay Gandhi pension scheme did not come up to claim the amount. There were nearly, 5,000 beneficiaries of 18,000 under Sanjay Gandhi pension scheme.