How linking Aadhaar with caste and income certificate will benefit EWS students

The Central government has linked many schemes with the Aadhaar card. The government has also made it mandatory to link PAN card with Aadhaar. Failure to do so will result in the PAN card becoming inactive from next year. Now the Central government is planning to link Aadhaar with caste and income certificate.

It can be implemented soon in some states of the country. This will help the government to create an automatic verification system. Beneficiaries of various schemes will be benefited if Aadhaar is linked with caste and income certificate and ineligible people will not be able to take advantage of the schemes.

According to a report, by linking the caste and income certificate with Aadhaar, the government will be able to give scholarship to the students of economically weaker sections directly in their accounts. This will benefit 60 lakh students. Once the caste and income certificates are linked with Aadhaar, the automatic verification system will help the government to reach the right beneficiary.

Read | PAN not linked to Aadhaar will become 'inoperative' after March 31, 2023

States where the scheme will begin

The Central government will first do the work of distributing scholarships through automatic verification system in Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana. The linking of caste and income certificates with Aadhaar has been completed in these states.

With this arrangement, eligible children will be able to get scholarship on time. The decision has been taken after the meeting of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the secretaries.

Loopholes in present scholarship system

In the meeting, it was suggested to completely digitise the scholarship system given to the children of Scheduled Castes after Class 10. That is why now the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has set a target to take the scheme on the ground in the current financial year itself.

The Ministry has detected many loopholes in the present scholarship system. It has also happened that the same bank account was found to be linked to Class 10 and Class 12 students. The responsibility of accounting of these accounts rests with the educational institutions.

But now after linking these accounts with Aadhaar, scholarship will reach every student's account through direct benefit transfer, so that there will be no scope for loopholes.