60% of farmers remain out of PM Kisan scheme

About 60 per cent eligible farmers are deprived of the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi benefits as the States have not added them to the list of beneficiaries. As per the Agri-Census data, 13.79 crore farmers are eligible to join the scheme, but only 5.41 crore farmers have been registered so far.

While the Congress-ruled Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have started enrolling farmers for the scheme, West Bengal is the only State that has not registered a single farmer for the scheme, which will provide ₹6,000 annually in three equal instalments.

Scope expanded

The scheme is aimed at providing income support to small and marginal farming families across the country, numbering about 12.5 crore to enable them to take care of expenses related to agriculture and allied activities as well as domestic needs. The scope of the scheme has been expanded to cover all farmers in the country irrespective of the size of their land holdings.

According to the presentation made at the State Agriculture Ministers’ conference held by the Department of Agriculture Cooperation and Farmers Welfare this month, a total of 13,79,42,580 beneficiaries have been identified through the Agri-Census data.

The beneficiaries’ summary report on the PM Kisan website shows that 5,41,42,319 farmers have been registered. It means that 8,38,00,261 eligible farmers are still out of the ambit of the scheme.

The responsibility of identifying eligible beneficiary farmers and uploading their data on PM-Kisan portal is entrusted to the States. The financial benefit under the scheme is transferred to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries as and when their verified data is uploaded.

Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andrha Pradesh and Gujarat are the top States which have registered the maximum number of beneficiaries while West Bengal has not joined the scheme yet.

Benefit transfer

About 79 per cent of the current beneficiaries have received the first instalment, while 59 per cent have received the second instalment.

According to the Agriculture department, 6.68 lakh payments failed while paying the first instalment while 1.32 lakh failed during second instalment. At the initial stage of implementation, Stop Payment instructions were issued in respect of the release of the first instalment to 2,69,605 beneficiaries in various States as there were discrepancies in their bank account details.