The Prime Minister’s Office, PMO, has written to various Ministries and Departments to take up immediate steps for operationalisation of the direct cash transfers for delivery of services to beneficiaries of social entitlements. The move follows the first meeting of the National Committee on Direct Cash Transfers chaired by the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh on the 26th of this month. The directive emphasizes on a seamless and trouble free rollout of the programme in 51 districts across the country from 1st January next year.

An official release said, the PMO has also asked the Department of Financial Services to hold an immediate meeting of the Financial Inclusion Committee to oversee opening of bank accounts by the beneficiaries with ease, linking of bank accounts with Aadhaar numbers and ensuring that the operations of Banking Correspondents are made flexible and easily accessible to the beneficiaries. The Department has also been asked to design an incentive package for the Banking Correspondents who will dispense cash directly to beneficiaries. The Department will also need to resolve issues of utilizing the existing Post Offices network to undertake Direct Cash Transfers.

The PMO has also written to the Unique Identification Authority of India's Chairman, Nandan Nilkeni, asking him that the Technology Committee headed by him consider providing dedicated individuals to each of the nine implementing Ministries to assist them in their work on digitizing databases of beneficiaries which is critical for rolling out direct cash transfers to them. The release added that the implementation Committees in each Ministry have been directed to meet on a weekly basis to complete the task of digitization.