Agriculture Minister B.C. Patil on Thursday said that monetary benefits under some of the agricultural schemes that had been digitally transferred to farmers’ accounts had landed in their Airtel Payments Bank accounts instead of regular bank accounts in some instances, as farmers had not linked their regular bank accounts with Aadhaar cards.
Addressing a press conference in Bengaluru, the Minister said such schemes included crop insurance claims and other farm related.
Will issue notice
“The digital transfer of money under these schemes would be effected based on Aadhaar numbers of beneficiaries. In some cases, beneficiary farmers have not linked their bank accounts with Aadhaar cards. They would have submitted Aadhaar cards for getting mobile sim cards based on which the service provider may have linked with its payments bank,” he said. Taking exception to linking without properly explaining the consequences, he said the Agriculture Department would issue notices to the mobile service provider. It would also examine the possibility of proceeding legally, he noted.
The incident came to light when 60 beneficiaries among the total 68 in Haveri district complained that they had not received the digital transfer of monetary benefits under a government scheme, he said. Upon verification, it was found that the beneficiary amount had got transferred to the Airtel Payments Bank accounts, he said.
The Minister said a verification exercise would be taken up at all the districts to know how much of money had actually gone into the regular bank accounts and how much of it had landed in Airtel Payments Bank. He appealed to farmers to immediately link their bank accounts with their Aadhaar cards to prevent recurrence of such incidents. To a query on whether it was wrong to get the benefits transferred to the Airtel Payments Bank, he said the issue was about matter of convenience as it would be easier for farmers to withdraw money from their banks in villages instead of going to towns.
Airtel responds
When contacted by The Hindu, the Airtel Payments Bank spokesperson said they had taken note of the comments made by the Minister and will be getting in touch with his department.
“Airtel Payments Bank follows stringent, compliant processes which are driven by customer consent, in a secure way through biometrics. The bank also takes additional consent from customers for receiving DBT in their Airtel Payments Bank accounts. It is to be noted that the DBT linking process in the country changed two years back, wherein, the customer must provide consent and self-disclose his previously seeded bank account, which is then verified independently through an industry body, before his new account can be used for the purpose of DBT receipts.”