The Centre on Tuesday confirmed in Parliament that there is an over 24% drop in the total amount given under the latest PM-KISAN installment to farmers against the amount given on May 31 last year.
While nearly Rs 22,555 crore was given under the scheme as an installment on May 31 last year, the total amount fell to around Rs 17,985 crore on October 17 last year and was down further to Rs 17,107 crore in the latest installment paid on February 27, 2023.
News18 had reported on March 9 that the number of farmers who got the latest installment of Rs 2,000 on February 27 dropped to about 8.54 crore from 11.27 crore farmers who got the money last May.
News18 has learnt that this could be due to the land and beneficiary records of farmers not being updated in central databases, a requirement made mandatory by the Centre for transparency and reducing frauds and ensure there are no leakages or ineligible beneficiaries.
“Release of benefits under PM-KISAN is an ongoing and continuous process. Benefits are released after receipt of data from respective State/UT Governments and due verification of the same at PM-KISAN Portal,” Agriculture Minister NS Tomar told Parliament.
Tomar, in a written reply, said that as per the operational guidelines of the scheme, States/UTs identify and verify the eligible farmers before uploading the data on PM-KISAN Portal. “Benefits are transferred to the eligible beneficiaries through Direct Benefit Transfer mode after validation of the uploaded data on PM-KISAN Portal with Aadhaar authentication, Public Finance Management System (PFMS) for validation of account and Government employees’/pensioners data, Income Tax Department for validation of income tax payee status and with National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI) for account validation and Aadhaar based payments,” the Minister told Lok Sabha.
He further said that eligible farmers are being enrolled and deceased or ineligible beneficiaries are being removed by way of continuous verification and validation of the beneficiary’s data by the States/UTs.
Tomar further said the data under the scheme is dynamic. “The States/UTs have been provided with the option to mark beneficiaries as eligible to ineligible and vice versa, after due verification. E-KYC of all the beneficiaries is also being done to verify their status. States/UTs have been asked to expedite the process for saturation of the scheme with all eligible beneficiaries,” Tomar said.
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