Aadhaar Card helped Centre save ₹ 90,000 crore, Finance Minister Arun

New Delhi: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley informed that the Aadhaar Card had helped save ₹ 90,000 crore till March 2018, saying, ‘Aadhaar has proved to be a game changer for India.’ Jaitley added that the funds would be sufficient to implement three beneficiary schemes like the Ayushman Bharat. Furthermore, the Finance Minister informed that the Aadhaar Cards were provided to nearly 99% of Indian citizens and concessions worth ₹ 69,868,000 crore were provided to the poor.

The Lok Sabha recently approved the Aadhaar Amendment Bill. As per the Supreme Court’s judgement, the Aadhaar number cannot be made mandatory while opening a bank account or taking a mobile connection. Given the developments, the government has passed an amendment bill for Aadhar at the Lok Sabha. However, the Aadhaar card is compulsory for claiming any benefits from the government schemes.

The Finance Minister has thus underlined the importance of the Aadhaar card in his article posted on social media. Also, the World Bank claims that India could save up to ₹ 77,000 crore every year with the use of Aadhaar card. “Its use has shown a significant saving of up to ₹ 90,000 crore till March 2018. It enabled all the welfare schemes to be linked to the Aadhaar card, eliminating from the list fake beneficiaries or fraudulent beneficiaries who claim the state-run benefits more than once. Besides, the commissions payable to agents and middlemen also have been saved. Therefore, the Centre could save a sum of up to ₹ 90,000 crore, claimed the Finance Minister as he expressed satisfaction over the state’s performance.

Arun Jaitley has pointed out that the government could implement three more schemes like the Ayushman Bharat (PMJAY) or the National Health Protection Scheme with the saved funds of ₹ 90,000 crore. Due to the Aadhaar card linking to the bank account, the underprivileged beneficiaries got the money from the government schemes directly into their bank accounts. The Finance Minister also informed that the benefits from the different government schemes had been credited to nearly 63.52 crore bank accounts. Additionally, Finance Minister Jaitley claimed that India was the first country to reach out directly to the poor through such benefits with the use of technology.

Meanwhile, the International financial institutions demand that India, which is a developing economy, should not weaken itself by providing subsidies to its people. The institutions brought to notice that the Indian economy would not be able to afford the expenses of billions of rupees required for it. At the same time, the international institutions were also pointing out that the benefits were being availed by non-deserving people rather than the poor. According to some analysts, India cannot stop the subsidies because of poverty in the country. Albeit, it has now been observed that the grants are reaching the rightful beneficiaries because of the Aadhaar card-linking to the bank accounts and the embezzlement of funds of the welfare schemes and subsidies has stopped, which has been rightly pointed out by the Finance Minister.