Odisha’s Finance Department has ordered a statewide shift in how government benefits are paid. Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes will no longer rest on a bank account number alone. Departments must route assistance through Aadhaar-linked bank accounts so money reaches the intended beneficiary and leakages are harder to hide.
Additional Chief Secretary Sagarika Hota has written to every department with the new instruction. The move follows a decision of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in its seventh meeting for 2025-26. Officials say Aadhaar seeding makes it easier to identify the real claimant. If Aadhaar records and bank details do not match, authentication can stop a faulty transfer before the money leaves the system.
Where a beneficiary’s Aadhaar is already mapped with NPCI, the payment can go straight to the currently active, mapped account. That is meant to cut delays and reduce the chance of funds landing in a dormant or wrongly entered account.
Departments have also been told to report, in a fixed format, the status of Aadhaar-linked payments for every scheme coded on the DBT Bharat portal. Housing and Urban Development, Health, Education, Panchayati Raj, Agriculture, Women and Child Development, and other implementing departments must move their existing beneficiary payment systems onto the Aadhaar-linked route without delay.
The Finance Department’s case is straightforward: stronger authentication, fewer irregularities, and a clearer path from the treasury to the person the scheme was written for. Implementing departments are now expected to take the operational steps that turn that order into routine practice.
