Emphasising that it is necessary to reduce cash in circulation and promote secure digital payment methods instead for greater transparency
President Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday urged all citizens to support the Union government's massive digital payment drive, and hailed the Aadhaar initiative as a "watershed event" in the country's development story.
The President was speaking at Rashtrapati Bhavan at the 100th mega draw of lot for Lucky Grahak Yojana and Digi Dhan Vyapar Yojana — the two schemes organised by the government thinktank Niti Aayog to encourage digital transactions by incentivising them.
"India is on the cusp of a digital revolution. More than one billion Indians have a unique identity number (Aadhaar) with a biometric identifier which is unique in its own way," he said.
"Even countries which are technologically far more advanced than India with comparatively much smaller size population do not have such a system in place," he added.
Emphasising that it is necessary to reduce cash in circulation and promote secure digital payment methods instead for greater transparency, he said nation remains primarily a cash-based economy with about 95 per cent of the personal consumption and 86 per cent of all transactions still being in cash.
Calling for citizens' support in the digital payment drive, he said, "India has a long way to go to become a cashless society. The initiatives of the government are a good beginning and we need to sustain and nurture these with active participation from all segments of the society."
Lauding the Aadhar enabled payment system and the BHIM app for their easy reach to every citizen, he complimented the Central government on its initiatives in promoting digital payments among all strata of the society.
"The government will achieve their end if people adopt them proactively," he said.
At the 100th mega draw of lots, a Central Bank of India customer making a digital transaction of Rs 1,590 bagged a prize money of Rs1 crore under government's schemes to push digital payments. The second prize of Rs 50 lakh went to a Bank of Baroda customer, while Punjab National Bank customer won the third prize of Rs 25 lakh. All the three customers had carried out transactions using their RuPay debit cards.
Three merchants also won prizes of Rs 50 lakh, Rs 25 lakh and Rs 12 lakh, respectively.
The winners, whose were congratulated by President Mukherjee, will be felicitated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 14 on Ambedkar Jayanti at Nagpur.
- Over 18 million people have downloaded Bharat Interface for Money or the BHIM App.
- The two schemes were launched on December 25th, 2016. Under the scheme, daily, weekly and monthly rewards worth Rs. 256 crore has been disbursed to over 16 lakh citizens over the past 100 days
- Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi and Karnataka have emerged as the top five states / UTs with maximum number of winners.
- Salaried employees, housewives, farmers and daily wage labourers were among the winners. A majority of the winners were in the age group of 21 to 30 years. A significant number of winners were also above 60 years of age.
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 "President Pranab Mukherjee")
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