Delivering its poll promise, the Central Government on Saturday notified a decision to extend the benefit of ₹6,000 per year under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme to all 14.5 crore farmers in the country, irrespective of the size of their landholding.
A decision in this regard was taken in the first Cabinet meeting of the new NDA government on May 31. In its manifesto for 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party had promised to extend the scheme to all farmers.
Notifying the decision, the Union Agriculture Ministry has written to all State Governments, asking them to identify beneficiaries subject to the existing exclusion factors. “All the state/UT governments are, therefore, requested to expedite 100 per cent enlistment of eligible beneficiaries as per the revised scheme so that farmers are able to avail the benefit of the scheme,” the Ministry said.
Those excluded from the PM-KISAN include institutional land holders, farmer families holding constitutional posts, serving or retired officers and employees of State or Central government as well as Public Sector Undetakings and Government Autonomous bodies. Professionals like doctors, engineers and lawyers as well as retired pensioners with a monthly pension of over ₹10,000 and those who paid income tax in the last assessment year are also not eligible for the benefits.
The ₹75,000 crore scheme was announced in the interim budget in in February 2019, under which the Central Government decided to provide ₹6,000 per year, in three equal installments, to an estimated 12.5 crore small and marginal farmers holding land up to 2 hectares.
The revised scheme will further cover two crore more farmers with an estimated expenditure of ₹87,217.50 crore in the 2019-20 fiscal year.
The Centre has also asked State Governments to use the existing land ownership system to identify beneficiaries and transfer the benefits after the family details are uploaded on the PM-KISAN portal.
The responsibility of identifying the eligible beneficiary farmers and uploading their data on PM-KISAN portal lies entirely with the State Governments, it said.
The Government so far has enrolled 3.66 crore beneficiaries. Of these, 3.03 crore have been paid the first installment of ₹2,000 and of them, two crore have got the second installment as well.
Published - June 08, 2019 04:46 pm IST
