Hyderabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been acting swiftly to financially insulate a vast majority of India’s poor from the adverse impact of coronavirus pandemic outbreak. It collected the data of over 20 crore women Jan Dhan account holders the same day of the announcement of PM Garib Kalyan Scheme that aims to provide food, fuel and some cash in the hands of 80 crore poor people during the lockdown period.
Under the PM Garib Kalyan Scheme, Union government will provide Rs 5,00 per month to over 20.40 crore women Jan Dhan account holders for the next three months as disposable cash in their hands.
“The data was asked by DFS on March 26 and banks were advised to submit it on that date itself and the directions of DFS were complied with,” a senior official in a public sector bank told ETV Bharat.
Department of Financial Services (DFS), which is the nodal department under the Ministry of Finance to supervise banking, insurance and financial institutions in the country, collected the data of over 20.40 crore eligible account holders the same day when Finance Minister announced Rs 1.7 lakh crore PM Garib Kalyan scheme.
“Banks will be able to transfer the money to these Jan Dhan account holders upon receiving instructions from the department of financial services,” he told the ETV Bharat while explaining the preparation of public sector banks to transfer cash to Jan Dhan account holders for the first time since the launch of the scheme in 2014.
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He said transfer of funds to over 20 crore account holders will not be a problem due to advancements made in the core banking systems (CBS) used by public sector banks.
He told ETV Bharat that most likely the beneficiary data will be shared with National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) by the DFS which has a sophisticated management information system (MIS) for this kind of mass funds transfer.
He said the data about over 8.7 crore beneficiaries of PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme is already available with the banks as the scheme was rolled out last year.
“In case of PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme transfers, National Payment Corporation of India shares the data with the banks in Microsoft Excel sheets and then the banks execute the payment through their core banking system (CBS),” he told ETV Bharat while explaining the backend process for the direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme implemented by the Union government.
He said most likely this transfer of Rs 5,00 per month to women Jan Dhan accounts will be also routed to banks through the National Payment Corporation of India.
“Given our past experience, most likely the DFS will route the beneficiary data to us through the NPCI,” he said.
Similarly, the data of over 8 crore Ujjwala subsidised gas scheme beneficiaries is already available with oil marketing companies and public sector banks as the scheme is ongoing in nature.
“Banks have already been transferring the subsidy component directly to the eligible LPG consumers, so there will be no problem if the entire price of an LPG cylinder is to be transferred to Ujjwala beneficiaries through us,” he added.
(Article by Krishnanand Tripathi)
