PM KISAN - GOVERNMENT SCHEME
News: Declining the no. of beneficiaries under the PM-KISAN: The Story so far
What's in the news?
● The number of farmers who received the 11th installment of funds from the Prime Minister’s Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) has fallen by 67%, according to the Agriculture Ministry’s response to a Right to Information query from activist Kanhaiya Kumar.
Key takeaways:
●
From 11.84 crore farmers
in the first installment, the trend of decrease started from the sixth
installment which was received by 9.87 crore farmers.
●
The seventh, eighth,
ninth and tenth installments were received by 9.30, 8.59, 7.66 and 6.34 crore
people respectively.
●
The Union Agriculture
Ministry said it was an erroneous reflection on the functioning of the PM Kisan
scheme and argued that the responsibility of maintaining the data of
beneficiaries, remained with the States.
●
The Ministry said PM
Kisan was one of the largest Director Benefits Transfer schemes in the world
and certain higher income categories of farmer families were excluded from the
benefits.
● “The Scheme extensively uses digital technologies to verify eligibility of farmers. States/ UTs upload the data of eligible farmers after verification of the farmers, in terms of eligibility and exclusion criterion prescribed under the scheme. The data of farmers so uploaded by States goes through several validations, through the portals of UIDAI, PFMS, Income Tax Portal and NPCI,”
About the scheme:
● PM-KISAN is a central sector scheme (100% of its financing from the central government) launched on 24th February 2019 to supplement the financial needs of land-holding farmers through direct benefit transfer (DBT) mode.
Objectives:
Benefits:
● Under the PM KISAN scheme, all landholding farmers’ families shall be provided the financial benefit of Rs.6000/- per annum per family. It will be paid in three equal installments of Rs.2000/- each, every four months.
Beneficiaries:
●
When the PM KISAN Scheme
was launched on 24 February 2019, its benefits were admissible only to Small
and marginal Farmers’ (SMF) families, with combined landholding up to 2
hectares. The Scheme was later revised and extended
to all farmer families irrespective of the size of their landholdings.
● The entire responsibility of identifying the eligible farmer's families for benefit under the scheme is of the State/UT Governments.
List of Exclusion:
The following
categories of farmers are not eligible to get the benefits of the PM-KISAN
scheme:
○ Former
and present holders of constitutional posts
○ Former
and present Ministers/ State Ministers and former/present Members of Lok
Sabha/Rajya Sabha/ state Legislative Assemblies/ State Legislative councils,
former and present mayors of Municipal corporations, former and present
Chairpersons of District Panchayats.
○ All
serving or retired officers and employees of Central/ State Government
ministries /Offices/Departments and its field units Central or State PSEs and
Attached offices /Autonomous institutions under Government as well as regular
employees of the Local Bodies (Excluding Multi-Tasking Staff / Class IV/Group D
employees)
○ All
superannuated/retired pensioners Rs.10,000/-or more (Excluding multi-tasking
employees)
○ All
Persons who paid income Tax in the last assessment year
○ Professionals
like Doctors, Engineers’ Lawyers, Chartered Accountants, and Architects
registered with Professional bodies and carry out professions by undertaking
the practice.