Chandigarh, Oct 11- Haryana, today, became the first State in north India to disburse student scholarship payments using the Aadhaar-enabled payment system. The payments, which are made through micro ATMs, happens after online authentication with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) data server.
Haryana Chief Minister, Mr Bhupinder Singh Hooda, in presence of Chairman UIDAI, Mr Nandan Nilekani, inaugurated the project here today. The beneficiaries were students from Government Senior Secondary School, Durana Village of Ambala-I block.
The UIDAI Regional Office Chandigarh organized this function in association with Punjab National Bank and the Education Department, Haryana. There are more than 800 scholarship beneficiaries in Durana, of which most have enrolled for an Aadhaar number. This is the first project of its own kind under Region Office Chandigarh and is a part of the Financial Inclusion pilots to be conducted in 10 identified districts in the Northern States of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal, Chandigarh falling under regional office of UIDAI, Chandigarh.
A spokesman of the UIDAI Regional Office Chandigarh said that these ten districts have been identified for FI pilots for different schemes as per 2012-13 budget speech of the Union Finance Minister. These districts are: Fatehgarh Sahib, Gurdaspur, SBS Nagar in Punjab, Ambala-I and Sonepat blocks in Haryana, Una, Hamirpur, Bilaspur, Mandi in Himachal and UT Chandigarh. More such pilots are planned in the near future with the help of concerned State or Union Territory Governments in the region for identified schemes like Social Security Pension, MGNREGA, Public Distribution System and Property Registration.
These pilots based on Aadhaar authentication will facilitate efficient delivery of services to the beneficiaries and would help in checking leakages besides making the procedure more transparent. The beneficiaries will no longer have to go through the process of filling up withdrawal forms, bringing passbook or any introducer to banks or to wait in queue.