In a response to The Hindureport published on Sunday that the number of farmers who received the 11th instalment of funds from the Prime Minister’s Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) had fallen by 67%, 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,” the Ministry said.
It, however, did not say as to why only about three crore farmers had received all the 11 instalments.
It claimed that for each instalment, the benefits were processed only after the Request for Fund Transfer (RFT) were signed by the States/ UTs with the list of eligible farmers and after Fund Transfer Order (FTO)/ Sanction was successfully generated by the PFMS. “The eligibility of a farmer is dynamic in nature.
The States/ UTs check, verify, stop, and upload the data of farmers for transfer of benefits, each time an instalment is released to the registered beneficiaries. This helps in weeding out beneficiaries who have passed away, farmers who have sold their land and those falling in the exclusion criteria.
However, if a State holds the data of a farmer, due to any concern related to eligibility criterion and later on releases after satisfactory verification, then all payment due to that farmer should be given to him from the date of registration,” the Centre said.
It said the registration of the farmers on the PM Kisan portal and their verification for assessing eligibility was a continuous process.
“Accordingly, the number of eligible farmers who have received the benefits has increased over time compared to the 1st instalment given in December 2018-March 2019 quadrimester. Thus, while the number of farmers who were given first instalment was 3.87 crore, it rose to six crore in the second instalment; 7.65 crore in the third instalment; 8.20 crore in the fourth instalment; 9.26 crore in the fifth instalment; 9.71 crore in the sixth instalment; 9.84 crore in the seventh instalment; 9.97 crore in the eighth instalment; 10..34 crore in the ninth instalment; 10.41 crore in the tenth instalment and 10.45 crore in the eleventh instalment,” the Ministry said.
