About 5,000 people marked by the Uttarakhand transport department in the first phase of the monetary aid programme, will have to apply again to be the beneficiaries due to a technical discrepancy in the department’s software.

In the first phase of the programme, the department marked a total of 36,100 beneficiaries working as drivers, conductors and cleaners across the state in public transport that became eligible to receive the financial aid of Rs 2,000 for the next six months.

The State Government has already issued over Rs 23 crore to all district magistrates payable to the registered beneficiaries. However, many transactions apparently failed in many districts due to incorrect Indian Financial System Codes (IFSC) provided by the beneficiaries in their application which is a must for a bank transaction. Clarifying the matter, the deputy transport commissioner Sanat Kumar Singh informed that the transaction of about 5,000 people has got affected under the programme but it is not because all have provided the wrong IFSC codes. He said that many banks have merged in recent times due to which the old IFSC codes became invalid for the online transaction. Since the software being used for approval and rejection of this programme does not have a separate category to keep such applications separate from others, Kumar said that such beneficiaries will have to apply again as the whole scheme is associated with it. He added that the department is also working on the software in order to tackle such a situation during the second phase of the monetary aid programme. He said that such applicants will have to apply by October 31 to be the beneficiaries again and no extension will be provided by the department.