Finance Minister Arun Jaitley lashes out at the UPA Government on Aadhaar; Says, the UPA itself was a divided house on Aadhaar and the then Prime Minister was indecisive; Says, NDA Government re-examined the UPA law and completely changed it to effectively use public resources in subsidising poor.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley penned a blog on the idea of having a Unique Identity Number, UID for every citizen of India. Lashing out at the UPA Government on Aadhaar, he said the UPA itself was a divided house on Aadhaar and the then Prime Minister was indecisive.

Finance minister listed out the benefits of Aadhaar. He said, in the last 28 months over 122 crore Aadhaar numbers are issued & 99% of the adult population of India stands covered. 22.80 crore of PAHAL & Ujjwala beneficiaries are given cooking gas subsidies through DBT in their Aadhaar linked bank accounts. He said, 58.24 crore ration card holders stand linked. 10.33 crore MGNREGA card holders get wage payment through DBT in their bank accounts. The Govt. estimates that Rs.90,000 crore have been saved by the use of Aadhaar till March, 2018. Several duplicate, fake, & non-existent beneficiaries have been eliminated. According to the WorldBank Digital Dividend Report India can save Rs.77,000 crore /year by using Aadhaar.

In most schemes the direct benefit transfer takes place to the beneficiaries’ 63.52 crore bank accounts that had been linked with the unique identity ‘Aadhaar’ as on December 15, 2018. The total number of subsidy transactions through Aadhaar are almost about 425 crore.

The total amount of subsidy transferred through Aadhaar now equals Rs.169,868 crores. With the elimination of middlemen the benefits go directly to the bank accounts. Implemented only in India. The monies saved through Aadhaar is money fruitfully employed for the poor elsewhere.Praising Prime Minister Modi, Jaitley said, a decisive PM made it possible.