Direct Benefit Transfer for LPG (DBTL) Scheme operational in Mandi (HP), UIDAI asks tender to conduct field survey, imaging and mapping in 3 districts

Mandi district of Himachal Pradesh has been the last district to have Aadhar based Direct Benefit Transfer for LPG (DBTL) scheme launched by government of India during PHASE-I. With this 7.3 million people across 20 high Aadhaar penetrated districts can use subsidy to consumers who have completed formalities of seeding their Aadhaar numbers with their LPG distributor as well as with their bank accounts.

In an official statement government claims to transfer subsidy to 3 million people via direct cash transfers to consumers’ bank accounts worth 138 Crore in these districts. The scheme aims to check black marketing, and provide subsidy to consumers in their bank accounts. In these districts the subsidy on LPG cylinders will be provided directly to consumers in their Aadhaar linked bank accounts.

Since mid June government had transferred 2.76 million LPG (DBTL) based cash transfer across 19 districts. Subsidy in 20 districts will be transferred to only those who have linked Aadhaar number to LPG consumer number and Bank account. So far 1.72 million Aadhaar linked domestic LPG consumers have got an advance in their bank accounts.

Earlier today, the UIDAI’s Bangalore office floated a tender for providing the services relating to enrichment of VTC (village, town, city) data for 3 districts including Chittoor (Andhra Pradesh), Kolar in (Karnataka) and Krishnagiri in (Tamil Nadu) to conduct field survey/studies and mapping of every location with latitude and longitude and location images.

The details that need to be captured are photo of a landmark such as a ration shop, government school, post office box, pin-code board. Later, this data needs to be annotated daily onto digital map available on a dedicated website. Meanwhile, government started delivering monthly quota of ration vi biometric authentication in East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh.

The 12-digit Aadhaar numbers has already signed authentication service agreements with 26 organisations including private sector firms such as Vodafone and Visa Consolidated. These companies will use Aadhaar database of around 400 million people to authenticate their identity for providing offered services.