As per the cabinet note, “Now 60 per cent amount of education and exam feeds and full amount of other expenses will be released offline.”

Mumbai: Amid the controversy over loan waiver’s unresolved technical difficulties, a major set back for the state government’s ambitious project of ‘Direct Fund Transfer’ is that it is scrambled and not yet fully operative. This has forced the government to take the decision of releasing 60 per cent of education fees and scholarships offline to the Aadhar seeded bank account of students, ending the wait for lakhs of students belonging to the reserved and economically backward categories to heave a sigh of relief. The social welfare department was unable to release this money in the last few months. However, the state cabinet has now directed the IT department to complete all the work in this regard within a month.

When the government realised that it wouldn’t be possible to release all the funds through the web portal of the IT department, the decision to release these funds offline was taken for the first term of this academic year, i.e. 2017-18. The cabinet gave approval to this proposal on Tuesday.

As per the cabinet note, “Now 60 per cent amount of education and exam feeds and full amount of other expenses will be released offline.”

The MAHADBT portal was established a few months ago for online transfer of all the benefits of the government schemes into the bank account of beneficiaries. However, this work clashed with the work of the loan waiver as it was being handled by the same firm. Vijaykumar Gautam, principle secretary, IT department has recently been sent on a long leave, while the department continues to draw flak for both these issues.

The benefits of all schemes regarding school education, tribal development, minority department, higher and technical department were expected to be given through this portal only. However, due to the delay in operations, the plan has come to an uncertain juncture.