From Our Special Correspondent

Daijiworld Media Network

Bengaluru, Sep 14: Karnataka's implementation and management of direct benefit transfer (DBT) system has been poor and 22 departments have been transferred benefits of Rs 2,829.02 crore under 168 schemes outside the core DBT portal.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in its report tabled in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday said DBT of the year 2022 noted "the poor progress resulted in disbursements of benefits outside the DBT portal during 2018-2020.’’

The CAG observed that the slow progress in onboarding the schemes by the user departments was due to lack of ICT applications and digitisation of the beneficiaries' data.

The DBT cell did not have the information on the number of schemes which were required to be identified for onboarding; and availability of the ICT infrastructure in the departments for the identified schemes.

The DBT cell did not have the information on the status of beneficiary database digitization, design the beneficiary data with validated Aadhaar number etc., that are necessary for onboarding, the report said.

The State Government in December 2021 stated that the delay in onboarding of the schemes was due to non-availability of IT systems in many of the departments.

It further said the user departments could not develop their own IT system due to lack of IT skills.

The fact that the Operations and Technical Groups of the DBT cell failed to handhold the departments for timely onboarding of the schemes onto the DBT portal.

The State Government has ordered in August 2018 the establishment of an integrated direct benefit transfer (DBT) platform for all departments to transfer benefits to the citizens.

As of April 2021, 83 out of 239 schemes (35%) implemented by 15 departments were onboarded on to the core DBT portal.

Further, 83% of the overall transactions done through DBT were successful, and 14% of the transactions were rejected, the CAG has said in its report.