DBT Scheme to be expanded to 78 more Districts from July 2013

The National Committee on DBT chaired by the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh met on 5 April 2013 and approved expansion of the Direct Benefits Transfers (DBT) to 78 more districts and have introduced 3 more Pension Schemes under DBT. With this approval DBT will now cover 1/5th of the Country. 

The next phase of the scheme will begin from 1 July 2013 and take the number of districts covered under the scheme to 121. States like Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Bihar, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, which were not covered in the first phase of the scheme, are also covered under phase II. 

In the same meeting the committee took a decision to rollout direct benefit transfer of LPG subsidy in a phased manner beginning it with one district and expanding to 20 districts by 15 May 2013. Old age, disability and widows Pension Schemes that is managed by the Ministry or Rural Development was also added to the 26 Welfare Schemes under the DBT and will come into force from 1 July 2013. 

Creation of a DBT Mission Directorate for enabling smooth rollout of schemes, identification of bottlenecks and handholding of the departments and ministries was also announced in the meet. The Prime Minister has approved creation of a post of Mission Director for DBT.

More Decisions made in the Meeting

• Additional Schemes proposed and Approved: DBT now covers 26 schemes. The three Pension Schemes managed by MoRD (old age, disability and widows) will now be covered under DBT in all the covered districts. DBT for pension schemes would be introduced from 1 July 2013 along with the rollout of Phase-II.
• Expansion to Post Offices: The Scheme would be expanded to Post Offices as well as the schemes run through their accounts from 1 October 2013 – by which the plan of introducing the core banking system to the post offices will be completed in 51 districts. 
• Nationwide Database digitisation: The process of digitisation in all districts will be started