Scores of farmers lose out as bank transactions fail

There are 7,201 cases of direct benefit transfer transactions involving farmers alone that are not going through

Thousands of bank transactions are bouncing due to issues related with Aadhaar among others, which is depriving citizens, especially farmers, of cash benefits under various government schemes.

According to government data, there are 7,201 cases of direct benefit transfer (DBT) transactions involving farmers alone that are not going through due to non-seeding of Aadhaar numbers with the bank account, error in Aadhaar numbers or inactive Aadhaar numbers.

Officials say that this is a problem faced by not only farmers, but all beneficiaries of government schemes that use DBT. The government is chasing banks to sort out issues. It seems as though the problem relates to the Jan Dhan and Basic Savings Bank Deposit (BSDB) accounts, which have a deposit limit of Rs 1 lakh in a year and Rs 50,000 at any time. In spite of a directive from the finance ministry to relax the limits, banks appear to lack enthusiasm.

“So, if crop insurance of Rs 51,000 is credited, it’s designed to bounce back,” Agriculture Commissioner Brijesh Kumar Dikshit said. Dikshit wrote to the State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) twice - in May 2021 and January 2022 - asking banks to follow the finance ministry’s directive and allow Jan Dhan and BSDB to receive payments irrespective of the transaction limits. According to data, Karnataka has 8.76 crore operative current and savings accounts of which 7.73 crore are Aadhaar-seeded. There are 1.44 crore Jan Dhan accounts of which 1.24 crore are Aadhaar-seeded.

“Aadhaar seeding has two steps. The first step is to update the bank’s portal for Aadhaar linking. Seeding has a second step in the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) portal. In certain cases, the first step happens and there’s a lack of awareness on the second step,” Dikshit pointed out.

In August 2018, the government made Aadhaar the basis for all beneficiary payments or direct benefit transfers. There are 120 schemes under which approximately Rs 12,000 crore have been disbursed.

“We have also found an issue with joint accounts as two Aadhaars can’t be seeded to the same account. This is common in rural areas,” Dikshit said. As far as crop insurance is concerned, Dikshit said the failure rate is under 2% as against 5% last year. “Even 2% is close to 10,000 cases. Ultimately, we want this to be 0%,” he added.