‘Benefits of the Aadhaar – where it stands today’

The Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has released a Facebook post titled ‘Benefits of the Aadhaar – where it stands today’ highlighting how the efficient use of the Aadhaar based identification has aided in improving the governance and in efficient delivery of services.

How Aadhaar has aided in reducing leakages?

The Finance Minister highlights the efficacy of Aadhaar in reducing leakages through following instances:

• The Minister cites that Aadhaar’s use in the delivery of subsidies has helped saved Rs 90,000 crore in the last few years till March 2018 by eliminating several duplicate, non-existent and fake beneficiaries.
• The Digital Dividend Report of the World Bank estimates that India can save Rs 77,000 crore every year by the use of Aadhaar.

The Minister further states from savings through efficient implementation of Aadhaar the government can fund three schemes of the size of Ayushman Bharat.

How Aadhaar benefitted the people?

The Minister notes that with Aadhaar the government was able to eliminate middlemen and the benefits of various welfare schemes were directed to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries. Under the schemes like

• PAHAL and Ujjwala beneficiaries are given cooking gas subsidies through direct benefit transfer (DBT) in their Aadhaar-linked bank accounts.
• 33 crore MGNREGA cardholders are getting wage payment directly through DBT in their bank accounts.

The Finance Minister gave special credits to Shri Nandan Nilekani who spearheaded the Aadhaar in the beginning days and Dr Ajay Bhushan Pandey, who subsequently provided it with the direction and expansion.

Two years of insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC)

The Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has written a Facebook post titled ‘Two years of insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC)”. In the post, he explains how things have been changed after the IBC was passed by the Parliament.

Once the IBC was passed by the government, the government took immediate steps to set up Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India and National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).

Recovery of Debt

The Finance Minister states that the recovery under the IBC was satisfactory and highlights the ways under IBC through which the money was recovered:

• The section 29 A of IBC mandated that persons who have contributed to the defaults of the corporate debtor or are undesirable due to incapacities as specified in the section or are a ’related party’ to another defaulting party, are prevented from gaining control of the corporate debtor by being declared ineligible to submit a resolution plan under the Code.
• As a result, the companies are paying up in anticipation of not crossing the red line and being referred to NCLT.
• Many debtors are paying up once the creditor has filed the petition at a pre-admission stage so that the declaration of insolvency does not take place.
• NCLT has resolved some major cases & many are on the way of resolution.

There has been a definite improvement in the lending and borrowing behaviour, an increase in the conversion of NPAs into standard accounts and decline in new accounts are a testimony to this fact.

The Finance Minister notes that so far 1322 cases have been admitted by NCLT. 4452 cases have been disposed at the pre-admission stage and 66 have been resolved after adjudication. 260 cases have been ordered for liquidation. In 66 resolution cases, the realization by creditors was around Rs. 80,000 crores.