Demonetisation: Three member panel to study cashless transactions

The committee consists of secretaries of MeitY Aruna Sundararajan, DIPAM Neeraj Kumar Gupta and Niti Aayog's CEO Amitabh Kant.

A three-member committee of secretaries has been set up on directions from the Prime Minister’s Office to study ways of transitioning India into a cashless economy, a senior government official told The Indian Express with the panel primarily being assigned the task of finding the cost and the minimum time it would take for the changeover to occur.

The committee consists of secretaries of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology Aruna Sundararajan, Department of Investment and Public Asset Management Neeraj Kumar Gupta, and Niti Aayog’s chief executive officer Amitabh Kant. “Mainly the committee has been asked to recommend the changes in infrastructure that would be required to be made in order to make India a cashless economy on war-footing,” the official said.

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He also said that the panel was constituted after several concerns were raised in Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting around the inconveniences caused to citizens on account squeeze in cash circulation after the government’s demonetisation move.

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Even as no definite timeline has been given to the committee, according to the official, who said that it was understood that the recommendations will have to be submitted soon, considering the Centre wants to begin the transitioning process as early as possible.

On Monday, a two-member ministerial group comprising Piyush Goyal and Ravi Shankar Prasad met to formulate a strategy for areas that would need a fillip to promote cashless transactions in the country. These included areas such mobile wallets, payment service operators, unified payments interface, and banking correspondence through common service centres (CSCs).

Since announcement of the decision to pull out the older Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes out of circulation, the government has brought about a spate of policy changes in an attempt to balance rationing of the new currency on the one hand and making it available for sections of society on the other. The Reserve Bank of India has also been announcing steps to promote cashless modes such as prepaid payment instruments by increasing the monthly limits on these instruments.