As many as 3.3 crore farmers have received the first instalment of ₹2,000 under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PMKisan) while the number of beneficiaries who received the second portion was 2.86 crore, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar informed Parliament on Friday.

While Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 1.12 crore lakh beneficiaries getting the first instalment and 1.08 crore getting the second, Andhra Pradesh was in the second spot with 34.43 farmers getting the first instalment and 31.27 lakh getting the second, Tomar said in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha. The third on the list was Gujarat where 28.32 lakh farmers received the first portion and 28.22 lakh got the second.

One of the first decisions of the re-elected Narendra Modi government was to remove the limit on landholding for PMKisan benefits. While earlier only farmers having landholding smaller than 2.5 hectares were eligible to get income subsidy under the scheme, it has now been extended to all farmers.

“The data of beneficiaries uploaded by them have to undergo a multi-level verification and validation by variousagencies concerned, including banks, and then the amount is released into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries,” Tomar said explaining the delay in payouts.

In a reply to another question, the Minister said out of 15.11 crore operational holdings, approximately 14.50-crore farmer families are expected to be benefited after exclusion. This would require ₹87,217.50-crore funding, including the administrative charges of ₹217.50 crore.

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