Accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of being on a “lying spree” again, Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on Tuesday disputed Mr. Modi’s claim that the Karnataka government had not given details of beneficiaries under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme.
In a tweet, Mr. Kumaraswamy said that Karnataka has given data of 9.9 lakh registered farmer beneficiaries to the Union government. To prove his point, he tagged the March 8 letter written by Agriculture Commissioner of Karnataka, Brijesh Kumar Dikshit, to Joint Secretary and CEO of PM-KISAN, Union Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers’ Welfare Department, Vivek Aggarwal.
Informing him about the validation and uploading details of small and marginal farmers eligible to receive the benefits, the letter, however, states that only 17 beneficiaries have been approved and of them 6 have received the first instalment. “There is lot of anxiety among the applicant eligible farmers regarding when they would receive the first instalment. All payments in case of Karnataka are Aadhaar-based, thereby requiring no checking/verification of bank account number and IFSC code,” the letter said.
While Mr. Kumaraswamy mentions that 9.9 lakh farmers’ data has been given, the letter to the Centre, however, mentions that 3,10,967 lakh small and marginal farmers have been validated.
The letter has also requested the Union Agriculture Department to take up the matter of non receipt of the first instalment under PM-KISAN by eligible farmers of Karnataka and get their accounts credited with the same at the earliest.
