New Delhi: The Congress scrambled on Tuesday to put the stamp of its “hand” on ‘direct cash transfers’, calling it an election promise fulfilled and lining up Rahul Gandhi to lead the celebrations in the build-up to the launch of what it sees as a “gamechanging” scheme. Finance minister P Chidambaram and rural development minister Jairam Ramesh chose the Congress party platform to announce the launch of the scheme on January 1, dropping more than hints that cash transfers would be among the party’s bragging points for the 2014 Lok Sabha contest. “Aapka paisa, aapke haath”, Jairam introduced the scheme: the punch line echoing the party’s winning “Congress ka haath, aam admi ke saath”, the battle theme for two consecutive elections. The announcement at a press conference where the line between the government and the party seemed to fade came a day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh decided to keep food and fertilizer subsidy out of the purview of the ambitious scheme to transfer subsidy meant for UIDAI-designated beneficiaries directly into their bank accounts. In the first phase, cash transfers will cover 42 schemes that include LPG, scholarships, oldage pension, schemes run by the ministries of health and women and children. At a meeting of senior ministers on Monday, the PM is learned to have spoken about the social costs of including food and fertilizer subsidies in the cash transfer scheme, expressing fears that diversion of the transferred money from the intended use to other expenditure would impact a household negatively. Sources said the PM also referred to the diversion disadvantaging women and about the sacrosanctity of food security and PDS. The PM’s apprehensions mean a drastic reduction in the scope of the cash transfer scheme and can, correspondingly, whittle down the political benefits that Congress hopes to derive from it. Food, fuel subsidy to continue, says PC New Delhi: Food and fertilizer subsidy have been kept out of the ambitious cash transfer scheme. At a press conference at the Congress headquarters, finance minister P Chidambaram said converting food and fertilizer subsidy into cash to be transferred to beneficiaries was complicated. But that did not seem to take away much from the government’s satisfaction over preparing the platform for transfer of cash ahead of the 2014 polls. A beaming finance minister P Chidambaram complimented the government on a job well done. He rebutted the opposition’s charge that cash transfers were akin to bribes for voters, saying the government was merely trying to ensure that the subsidies reached the beneficiaries in full, rather than launch any new scheme. Jairam Ramesh struck a distinctly political note, saying the scheme was actually a political campaign which got underway 25 years ago with the recognition by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi that 85% of the money released from Delhi never reached the beneficiaries. In the same vein, he stressed that the launch of the scheme could not have been possible without the IT revolution conceived and implemented by Rajiv Gandhi. He also said the government’s endeavour was only to ensure that people got their “haq”, or entitlement, offering a peek into how the party might market the scheme in the lead up to the elections. Significantly, in response to a question, Chidambaram scotched speculation that the scheme was part of a plan to eventually do away with subsidies, asserting that the government would continue with “merit” subsidies on food, fertilizer and some kinds of fuel. Ramesh said Rahul would hold a conference of district Congress committee presidents of 51 districts identified for the first-phase rollout from 2013.