A total of 4.7 lakh farmers in Telangana have not received either part or full benefits under the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme, a study by Libtech India, a research group, found.
Under the scheme modelled after Rythu Bandhu scheme of the Telangana government, the Central government is transferring ₹6,000 annual benefit each to eligible farmers in three instalments. The disbursement this year began by way of 10th instalment since January 1. While the transfer is scheduled to be tentatively closed by the end of February, the data mining conducted by Libtech India has revealed that a large number of eligible farmers have not been receiving either full or partial instalments since the beginning of the scheme in February 2019.
From the State, a total of 39,34,691 farmers are registered under the scheme, with an estimated entitlement of ₹6,558 crore. Of the total benefit, an estimated ₹6,165 crore has been paid and received by the farmers.
Technical reasons
However, the data crawling operations conducted by the study group could not find details of over 95,000 farmers online for technical reasons. Hence, the data pertaining to remaining 38,39,545 farmers has been proportionately applied to the 95,000 missing farmers too, to arrive at the estimated numbers, members of the study group informed.
As per the details shared, an estimated amount of ₹393 crore accrued to the 4.7 lakh deprived farmers. The average amount not received by the farmers over the past nine instalments stands at ₹8,360 per head. Chakradhar Buddha, representative of Libtech India fixed the blame squarely on official apathy in ensuring bank account linkage.
“The payment is based on either bank account or Aadhaar details, and due to the prior existence of Rythu Bandhu scheme, majority of the farmers are linked through bank accounts only the details of which are collated and submitted by Agriculture department. Minor mismatches in account details or inoperative/frozen accounts are resulting in several farmers not receiving the benefit,” Mr. Chakradhar said.
According to the study, three lakh farmers have been affected by rejection of bank details and other related issues. Seventy thousand more farmers were denied the facility, owing to ineligibility, and 60,000 due to “action required by the State”. For 40,000 more farmers, Aadhaar number has not been verified.
“Officials did not have details of the rejected farmers. If they take interest and ensure that account seeding is properly done, a large number of farmers who have faced rejection due to inaccurate bank details and Aadhaar details will benefit,” Mr. Chakradhar said.
