gandhinagar prime minister narendra modi on monday hit out at his opponents for their criticism of the covid vaccination certificate and initiatives such as upi and said that the digital india drive had not just made life simpler for citizens but also ushered in transparency and removed middlemen from the systembreaking his silence on the issue modi said that at a time when the world was discussing how india was able to issue certificates to citizens soon after they were vaccinated against covid19 there were some people who were just focusing on why his photograph appeared on these documentsthe world is amazed at the way records of each dose of vaccine given to such a large population was made available people elsewhere faced trouble in getting vaccine certificates but in india once a person got a vaccine dose he would immediately receive the certificate on his mobile phone modi said at the inaugural function of the digital india week 2022 the world is discussing how we managed to give covid19 vaccination certificates to people just after they got jabbed but a few people here in india were just focused on why there was modis photo on these certificates the pm said to the amusement of many in the audience without naming former finance minister p chidambaram he pointed to a speech in parliament where the congress mp had punched holes in the digital payment initiative pushed by the modi government postdemonetisation the pm said today small traders hawkers and even beggars are using upiwhen we introduced this scheme in parliament one exfinance minister raised many issues with it he said people do not have mobile phones how will they use them he is highly learned the problem with highly learned people is that they do a lot of analysis modi saidpointing to around 12 lakh upi transactions every minute in may modi said that the payment tool had bridged the gap between large outlets and street vendorsnearly 40 of the digital transactions take place in india a developing country upi has democratised payments upi type products are centre of attention around the world our digital products have scale they secure and have democratic values too he said modi said digital india initiative had led to around rs 23 lakh crore of direct benefit transfer resulting in preventing leakages of around 225 lakh crore during the last seveneight years to further enhance availability of various services the pm launched seven portals namely indiastackglobal a repository of projects implemented under globalstack