Ministries and government departments with a direct interface with the public on Friday got down to planning strategies to go cashless after Prime Minister Narendra Modi directed them to switch to online payments and cheques. The directives were issued by Mo di last night in a Cabinet meeting held to review the demonetisation drive. The steps to go cashless will be reviewed in a follow-up meeting next week. On its part, the labour ministry, along with the finance ministry, has decided to hold special camps in over 640 districts from Saturday to facilitate opening of bank accounts.
Ministries and government departments with a direct interface with the public got down on Friday to planning strategies to go cashless after Prime Minister Narendra Modi directed them to switch to online payments and cheques.
The directives were issued by Modi on Thursday night in a special cabinet meeting to review the demonetisation drive. The steps to go cashless will be reviewed in a follow-up cabinet meeting, likely next week. On its part, the labour ministry, along with the finance ministry, has decided to hold special camps in 640 districts from Saturday to facilitate opening of bank accounts for workers in the organised and unorganised sectors.
Communications have been sent to all state governments for cooperation. Teams comprising district magistrates, lead district managers of banks and labour officers will decide on the modalities of such camps.
A senior finance ministry official said making the use of debit cards and e-wallets mandatory was legally untenable, but banks had been asked to insist that account holders open e-wallets and use debit cards. On Thursday, the finance minister held a video-conference with senior bank officials.
The government also constituted a committee under NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant to look into digital payments for all government-citizen transactions. The Aayog in a presentation made to the government some time ago had pitched for promoting e-payment. Officials said the use of ATM cards was growing not only in urban areas but in semiurban and rural ones.
Quoting Reserve Bank of India data, an official said of the 720 million ATM cards issued, 450 million were used for cash withdrawals.
Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan directed his officials to achieve 100 per cent cashless working in the next 15 days. Payments for purchasing grain by Food Corporation of India will be either through RTGS or cheques. Advisories have been issued to states to install card readers alongside point-of-sale devices, which have been installed in 100,000 of the 500,000 ration shops in the country. A division bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and V K Rao of the Delhi High Court, on Friday said it would not look into the correctness of the Centre’s policy on demonetisation, as the issue was already under consideration in the Supreme Court. It said the government’s decision to put a cap on weekly withdrawal of ~24,000 had come to an end on November 24. Therefore, it did not want to go into the merit of the petition which sought quashing of Clause 2 (VI) of the Centre's notification
26TH NOVEMBER, 2016, THE BUSINESS STANDARD, NEW DELHI
Ministries and government departments with a direct interface with the public got down on Friday to planning strategies to go cashless after Prime Minister Narendra Modi directed them to switch to online payments and cheques.
The directives were issued by Modi on Thursday night in a special cabinet meeting to review the demonetisation drive. The steps to go cashless will be reviewed in a follow-up cabinet meeting, likely next week. On its part, the labour ministry, along with the finance ministry, has decided to hold special camps in 640 districts from Saturday to facilitate opening of bank accounts for workers in the organised and unorganised sectors.
Communications have been sent to all state governments for cooperation. Teams comprising district magistrates, lead district managers of banks and labour officers will decide on the modalities of such camps.
A senior finance ministry official said making the use of debit cards and e-wallets mandatory was legally untenable, but banks had been asked to insist that account holders open e-wallets and use debit cards. On Thursday, the finance minister held a video-conference with senior bank officials.
The government also constituted a committee under NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant to look into digital payments for all government-citizen transactions. The Aayog in a presentation made to the government some time ago had pitched for promoting e-payment. Officials said the use of ATM cards was growing not only in urban areas but in semiurban and rural ones.
Quoting Reserve Bank of India data, an official said of the 720 million ATM cards issued, 450 million were used for cash withdrawals.
Food Minister Ram Vilas Paswan directed his officials to achieve 100 per cent cashless working in the next 15 days. Payments for purchasing grain by Food Corporation of India will be either through RTGS or cheques. Advisories have been issued to states to install card readers alongside point-of-sale devices, which have been installed in 100,000 of the 500,000 ration shops in the country. A division bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and V K Rao of the Delhi High Court, on Friday said it would not look into the correctness of the Centre’s policy on demonetisation, as the issue was already under consideration in the Supreme Court. It said the government’s decision to put a cap on weekly withdrawal of ~24,000 had come to an end on November 24. Therefore, it did not want to go into the merit of the petition which sought quashing of Clause 2 (VI) of the Centre's notification
26TH NOVEMBER, 2016, THE BUSINESS STANDARD, NEW DELHI
Comments
Post a Comment