DBT recipients of central schemes to face fresh audit

New Delhi: The Centre will conduct a fresh assessment and verification of beneficiaries receiving direct benefit transfers (DBTs) under various central welfare schemes, including Ujjwala Yojna, PM-Kisan, free food scheme, PM Awaas Yojna, Public Distribution System and others by December. This exercise aims to update beneficiary data ahead of the next Finance Commission cycle starting April 2026.

Though the exercise is done from time to time, this time the concerned ministry will perform a fresh Aadhaar-based know your customer (KYC) verification along with states to weed out any possibility of gaps between states and centre's data.

There is a clear mandate to the ministry to ensure every beneficiary of the social welfare scheme has an Aadhar card and his bank account attached with an Aadhar card.

"While the process keeps on happening from time to time, this will be a wider exercise," a senior official told ET.

In the KYC verification process each ministry will also seek a wider list of documents, including Aadhar of other family members or other information as decided by the respective ministry to suit their requirements.

One reason for doing this is that the government is placing great emphasis on Aadhaar seeding and transfer of direct benefit through Aadhaar authentication and there is a clear mandate to modify all existing schemes accordingly.

"In cases where there is disbursement of the funds, the mandate is that all future schemes should be done through the Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS) to ensure Aadhaar authentication, and not merely Aadhaar seeding," the official said, adding that all the future schemes from the next financial year have to be designed or modified accordingly.

The official said the ministry will use the inputs during the verification to assess the intended impact and "tweak the scheme" wherever required or amend the criteria to avail the schemes accordingly.

For instance, in FY25, around 22 million beneficiaries did not avail free grains for 3 to 12 months.

"This means that either there is a gap, or they no longer require it," the official added. "The effort is to make the schemes more efficient," the official said.

There has been a more than ninety times increase in direct benefit transfer (DBT) in just a decade from over 7 thousand crores in 2014, DBT has risen to 6.83 lakh crore in the FY25.