Rs 2,829 crore paid in cash instead of ‘compulsory’ DBT system in Karnataka, CAG audit reveals

Cash benefits worth Rs 2,829 crore were paid to Karnataka citizens, under 168 schemes outside the ‘compulsory’ Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), defeating the purpose of a system that is meant to cut pilferage of public money.

This was found by the Comptroller & Auditor-General (CAG) in its performance audit of the DBT, which was tabled in the Assembly on Wednesday.

Karnataka set up an integrated DBT platform in August 2018 for all departments to transfer benefits to citizens’ Aadhaar-linked bank accounts.

Departments were required to use the platform “compulsorily” for all fund transfers by the end of the 2018-19 fiscal. As of April 2021, only 83 schemes were brought under the DBT system out of 239 identified ones, the CAG found.

According to the audit, the state claimed the delay to include all the schemes was “due to the non-availability of IT systems in many of the departments. It further stated that user departments could not develop their own IT systems due to lack of IT skills.”

“The fact remains 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 audit said.

The audit found an 83 per cent success rate for all DBT transactions between 2018 and 2020. However, lakhs of cases involving beneficiary transactions did not take place due to various reasons, depriving citizens of benefits.

Farmers deprived

This includes the flagship PM-KISAN under which the union government pays an eligible farmer Rs 6,000 and state Rs 4,000.

In 2019-20, out of 45.36 lakh farmers, payments could not be processed for 2.29 lakh beneficiaries due to Aadhaar name mismatch and non-seeding of Aadhaar-bank accounts.

Similarly, in 2020-21, payment was not processed for 2.30 lakh beneficiaries. Farmers were deprived of benefits worth Rs 91.99 crore, the audit said.

It also identified 6.66 lakh DBT transactions worth Rs 153.30 crore pending for anywhere between three and 673 days during 2018 and 2019.

“The DBT Cell, which is responsible to monitor the progress of each department and focus on last-mile delivery benefits, failed to monitor the transactions pending at various levels...” the CAG said.

Security risk to private data?

The audit found that government departments were storing Aadhaar details in their local databases, in violation of the Aadhaar Act and other guidelines. The law requires Aadhaar numbers to be stored in a secure Aadhaar Data Vault. The government told the CAG that beneficiary Aadhaar details were stored in a vault and departments are supposed to delete Aadhaar numbers from their local databases.