The government of India said trials are on to use the programme for fertiliser subsidy to check leakage of funds. Jayant Sinha, minister of state for finance was answering queries in the Lower House of Parliament.
DBT in fertilizer would be implemented soon in collaboration with states, the minister said.
According to the minister, trials are in progress in some places to transfer funds through DBT to check corruption.
The minister assured biometric systems would be introduced at fair price shops to check illegal transactions.
IFFCO has been making a strong pitch for DBT in urea for a long time. In pre-budget suggestions to the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley its MD Dr U S Awasthi had promised to offer all the help to the govt.
Explaining the blue-print for implementing DBT in fertilizer Awasti suggested the industry would upload the data of actual user of fertiliser on the fertiliser monitoring system platform for the next one year. He also promised to make available Jan Dhan and Aadhar account numbers.
On the other hand, Chairman of another cooperative giant KRIBHCO Dr Chandra Pal Singh Yadav finds the talk of DBT in fertilizer a fanciful idea. “You take it from me nothing of the sort is going to happen. And I am not saying so vis a vis this govt alone; several govts in the past also have toyed with the wooly idea with little results”, Yadav had earlier said in a cooperative conference.
Yadav is also critical of the govt apathy towards the mounting subsidy payments of fertilizer cooperatives such as IFFCO and Kribhco due to the govt. He is member of the Upper House of Indian Parliament as well.