Accounts of 6 lakh pensioners to be linked to Aadhaar

In a bid to plug leaks, the Delhi government has set a target to link accounts of around six lakh pensioners to the Aadhaar database. The AAP government has till now linked accounts of over 2.5 lakh pensioners — the accounts of 1 lakh beneficiaries were seeded with their Aadhaar IDs last month and 1.5 lakh were brought aboard the Direct Benefit Transfer platform in the first quarter of the year.

The Kejriwal government has now set a target of another 65,000 accounts to be linked by the end of the next month, city’s social welfare department secretary Ashwani Kumar said. “It is going to eliminate ghost beneficiaries from the system, end duplicity and leakages through a host of other means. Benefits will be stopped to those yet to acquire an Aadhaar ID of their own,” Mr Kumar explained.

However, Mr Kumar added the threat of action was more of a warning to speed up the process. Any such suspension of benefits would happen after due consideration as many families depend on pensions for their sustenance, he said. The process has also hit certain roadblocks, the official said. A large number of people are yet to join the Aadhaar platform, Mr Kumar said, listing it as one of the “issues.”

“In a few cases, people have complained that they have suddenly stopped receiving benefits, but later it turned out that some of the banks had linked another account of the person with Aadhaar instead of the regular one they had been using,” he said.

The AAP government had scrapped the quarterly disbursement of pensions last month and payments are instead being made on a monthly basis, providing relief to the widows, elderly and the disabled, the beneficiaries of the welfare scheme. Over six lakh people currently receive such pensions from the Delhi government.

These include 3.88 lakh old people, 1.6 lakh widows and 63,000 persons with physical disabilities.

The Delhi government disburses Rs 1,500 to each beneficiary under all the three categories. However, it makes a distinction between old people with those between 60 and 70 years of age, entitled to a monthly pension of Rs 1,000, and those above 70 getting Rs 1,500.