According to information obtained from the agriculture department under the RTI Act, about 44 percent of the funds transferred under Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana during Covid-19 lockdown could have failed to reach the beneficiaries’ accounts.
PM-Kisan yojana was launched in February 2019 by Central Government. Under this scheme, financial support of Rs. 6,000 per year is provided to small and marginal farmer families in three equal instalments.
According to Agriculture department, 1.12 million fund transfer failures have been reported across the nation between 23 March and 31 July. As many as 63, 30, 00 or over 56 percent of the failed transactions as of 31 July were eventually reprocessed.
MP accounted for the largest with 64.55 percent of failed transactions (72, 90, 00) followed by Maharashtra with 7.54% (85,000). 55, 000 failures were reported in Karnataka, 51,000 in Bihar and 48,000 failures in Uttar Pradesh.
Venkatesh Nayak (activist) who filed the Right to Information application for details on fund transfers said “Together these 5 states accounted for almost 86 percent of the total fund transfer failures during Covid-19 lockdown”.
In addition, 96 percent of failed transactions were re-processed in MP followed by Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
The activist said the data given to him was until 31 July adding that it may have been updated but is not publicly accessible.
He told that the funds involved were not mentioned in the response. He added “...if one had to believe that each case of transfer failure pertains to 1 instalment of Rs. 2,000, the total amount involved is over Rs. 22.58 lakhs. However, how many beneficiaries have been affected is also not known.”
Nayak further said nearly 44 percent of the failed transactions remain to be reprocessed and all of them may have been reprocessed successfully at the time of writing of these findings.
