Port Blair, Apr 13: Public response to embrace Digital Payments is on a roll giving a push to make India a less-cash economy and NITI Aayog’s move to incentivize digital transactions by the people has paid dividends. Nearly 16 lakh people and 91000 merchants have been rewarded since the launch of the two incentive schemes for Digital Payments – Lucky Grahak Yojana for consumers and DigiDhan Vyapar Yojana for merchants on 25th December 2016.
A sum of Rs.256,57,10,000 (Rs. 198,07,10,000 to consumers and Rs. 58,50,00,000 49,50,00,000 to merchants) has already been disbursed under the two incentive schemes. A total of 16,69,975 winners have been from various walks of life cutting across the barriers of age, sex and economic status.
There were 15,000 daily winners qualifying for total prize money of Rs. 1.5 crore every day. In addition to this there were over 14,000 weekly winners qualifying for total prize money of over Rs. 8.3 crore every week. Customers and merchants using RuPay Card, BHIM / UPI (Bharat Interface for Money / Unified Payments Interface), USSD based *99# service and Aadhaar Enabled Payment Service (AePS) were eligible for winning daily and weekly lucky draw prizes. The draws for schemes were taken out in 100 different cities around the country over a period of 100 days since 25th December 2016 in a ceremony accompanied by a digital payment adoption fair called Digidhan Mela.
The Digidhan Melas have been held in almost all States and Union Territories with Port Blair also being one of the city where the Digidhan Mela and the Lucky draw event was organized on 27th January 2017. A large number people from various walks of life attended the Mela held at ITF Ground who were briefed and encouraged to adopt different methods of digital payments. Through these Melas over 5000 financial institutions have reached lakhs of citizens and merchants all over the country to promote digital payment methods and more than 16,000 government and private institutions have been declared cashless.
The 100 days of the DigiDhan Melas will end with the Mega Draw of incentivizing schemes tomorrow on April 14th, the Ambedkar Jayanti. The Mega Draw event will be held at Divisional Sports Complex, Manakpur, Nagpur at 12.25pm where Prime Minister Shri. Narendra Modi will announce the winners of Rs.25 lakh, Rs.50 Lakh and Rs.1 Crore under Lucky Grahat Yojana and winners of Rs.12 lakh, Rs.25 lakh and Rs.50 lakh under DigiDhan Vyapar Yojana.
To mark the culmination of 100th DigiDhan Mela and Mega draw event, a state function will be organized in the Auditorium of Tagore Govt. College of Education, Middle Point, Port Blair tomorrow at 11.45am where Hon’ble Lt. Governor Prof. Jagdish Mukhi will be the Chief Guest and Hon’ble Member of Parliament Shri Bishnu Pada Ray will be Guest of Honour. Winners of various contests organized to mark the occasion will be awarded in the function. Arrangements have also been made to live telecast the mega draw event scheduled to be held at Nagpur. Similar programmes will also be organized at District Headquarters of North & Middle Andaman and Nicobar and all the Gram Panchayats. General Public has also been requested to attend the programme.
