The government of Andhra Pradesh is introducing multipurpose Aadhar-based smart cards to the beneficiaries (citizens) for availing benefits of different welfare schemes.

"Fingerprint-based POS (point-of-sale) terminals would be set up at all welfare departments' service centers, State Road Transport depots, Department for Pensions, Commercial Tax and other departments," state Information and Communications Technology Minister PonnalaLakshmaiah told newsmen here.

Smart cards issued to the beneficiaries would be inter-operable across all POS machines (different makes and models) and the card could be used for multi-purposes across all departments for various services in the state, the minister said. The smart card features would be extended to support banking transactions also, he added.

The Government of India has released a one-time additional central assistance of Rs 12.03 crore for the implementation of the project while the state government would bear the balance Rs 28 crore.

Lakshmaiah said the Union Department of Information Technology has accorded administration approval for the implementation of e-District project under the National e-Governance Project (NeGP) at a cost of Rs 61.43 crore. A sum of Rs 3.50 crore was already released to the state government.

e-District is one of the 27 mission mode projects under the NeGP aimed at electronic delivery of identified high-volume citizen-centric services, at district and sub-district level.

Initially 28 services would be delivered under e-District while another 200 would be added in the subsequent phases, the IT Minister said.