Cash to voters is easy with Direct Benifit Transfer

Earlier, candidates were forced to handover cash directly to voters through their agents. Though all the candidates do that, political rivalry led to tip-off to police or election officials leading to them being caught red-handed.

However, with a majority of voters at least possessing a bank account now, it has became easier for candidates to transfer the money from different acco-unts held by their followers.

Thanks to Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme being implemented by the Centre and state governments, almost all voters have a bank account now to get subsidies of various welfare schemes.

It’s an open secret that candidates focus on people from weaker sections, mostly residents in slums. All the political parties consider these sections as “solid vote bank” over others, since they compulsorily cast their vote on polling day. Since they are the “deciding factors” of poll outcome, local leaders from all the parties are busy collecting their bank account numbers.

Candidates believe this to be “safer and secure” as there are remote chances of getting caught. The modus operandi, according to a local leader in Amberpet is that candidates shortlist at least 500 of their followers. Each follower is Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh.

In the next stage, each follower will be provided the list of voters and their bank account numbers. They will be assigned the task of depositing the amount in these bank accounts in the denominations of just Rs 1,000 per vote. If a family has five votes, Rs 5,000 will be deposited, but not at one go, but after 2 to 3 days between each deposit.

Local leaders say that deposits of lower denominations would not raise any doubt and it is not possible to track such transactions that run into hundreds and thousands by bank officials or IT staff.