Panipat village first in state to go cashless

Mukesh Tandon

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Tribune News Service

Panipat, December 19

Jhatipur village in Panipat district became the first village in the state to introduce cashless transactions today. The village had been adopted by ICICI Bank just a week back.

It opened the accounts of every eligible resident on zero balance, said Ashok Kumar, sarpanch. With the support of the district administration, Aadhaar enrolment had been completed in two days, he said.

Around 6,000 persons living in 1,037 houses agreed to adopt a cashless transaction system as many of them had been using ATMs and online transactions earlier, he added.

All 22 shops within village limits were linked to the e-wallet system in the last two days. The bank promised to provide point-of-sale machines to shops in the next one week, he asserted.

Sanjay, a grocery shop owner in the village, said he collected Rs 2,500 today through the e-wallet. He said it was a good system because customers did not have to bring cash, he said.

Ramphal, a resident of the village working as mathematics teacher in Samalkha, said he had trained around 15 persons of the village in cashless transactions. He said they did not need cash to buy anything now.

The sarpanch had given in writing to Rakesh Verma, lead bank manager, that the village became cashless this afternoon.

The Jhatipur village panchayat was the first in the state to provide WiFi facility. The entire village was covered under a CCTV surveillance system and public address system.

To increase plantation, the panchayat provided a tree with tree guard to the head of every house, which was planted on the premises of each house.

Chander Shekhar Khare, Deputy Commissioner, told The Tribune that the village had been upgraded under the Digital India Mission.

“This village may today have become the first village in the state where 100 per cent transactions are cashless,” he added.