The Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme, launched with much fanfare aiming to bring transparency and plugging the leakage from distribution of funds sponsored by Central Government, has failed to take off mainly due to non cooperation by the state government officials, especially Deputy Commissioners.
Chief Secretary Ram Sevak Sharma has sent letters to all the 24 deputy commissioners expressing his discontent and seeking their active role in implementation of the scheme.
The letters have brought into light that though the number of fake and duplicate beneficiaries of social security scheme like — old age pension varied from the district to district — Sharma told them to act and ensure that the scheme becomes operational across the State at the earliest.
The Chief Secretary, in his letter to Gumla DC, said, “As I have explained to you on a number of occasions, seeding of Aadhaar is helpful in removing duplicates and fakes. Unfortunately, the overall progress of Aadhaar seeding remains quite poor in the State. It is barely 25 per cent of the total coverage. There are many variations among the districts and some of them are below 10 per cent too. From the data in an online portal, it appears that the total number of beneficiaries in the district are 36,282 under various sanctioned schmes out of which Aadhaar have been seeded only in 8,057 cases, which is around 22.19 per cent of the total beneficiaries.”
In his letter to Seraikela DC Kripa Nand Jha, Sharma points out that there are duplicate Aadhaar. There are 8,510(39.63 per cent) cases of duplicate Aadhaar numbers in his district.” This either means that Aadhaar numbers have been entered wrongly in the database or the same person is being paid more than one type of pension. Total number of cases of duplicate Aadhaar is 14,118 out of the total 2.54 lakh Aadhaars, which have been seeded in the entire state,” states Sharma.
Similarly, in his letter to Simdega DC Pravin Kumar, Sharma says that the data analysis made by him had brought into light a fact that there are a number of duplicate Bank/Post office accounts. In the data base, there are 2793911.43 percent) cases of duplicate bank/post office accounts in the district. This clearly shows that either a single person is getting the benefits from more than one scheme or that a single bank account is being used for depositing funds for more than one pensioner and some body is just siphoning funds with this modus operandi.
To Garhwa DC, Sharma says that the data analysis shows that there are many instances, in which a person is getting old age pension though he is not eligible as per the age criteria.
In his letter to Godda DC, the Chief Secretary has revealed that the scene was equally bad in his district. The data analysis shows that there are a number of duplicate Bank/Post Office accounts in his district. In the data base, there are 4424(10.53 percent)cases of duplicate bank/post office accounts in his district.
“This clearly proves that either a single person is getting the benefits from more than one scheme or that a single Bank Account is being used for depositing funds for more than one pensioner and somebody is just siphoning funds with this modus operandi.
“There are even examples of multiple beneficiaries’ being linked to a single account. You will be surprised to know that there are 2014 such cases where one account number has been found twice in your district and 126 cases where one account number has been found twice in your district and 126 cases where one account number has been found there to five times,” writes the Chief Secretary to DC Ravi Kumar.
Notably, Sharma, after taking over charge as Chief Secretary on April 1 last year, has been personally supervising the execution of the scheme and to put an end to the scam of innumerable fake and duplicate beneficiaries that siphoned off crores and crores of rupees from the state treasury every year.