In order to speed up payments under the PM Kisan Samaan Nidhi minimum income support scheme that provides an annual payout of Rs 6,000 to farmers in three equal instalments, the government has assigned common services centres (CSCs) to amend differences and update data of farmers registered for the scheme from Monday.
The finance ministry had recently asked agriculture ministry to instantly release unpaid instalments by 30th of September, aiming to boost consumption demand in rural markets.
A senior agriculture department official said that “Since the third instalment has to be given only after Aadhaar authentication, we have to verify data before making payment.” he added some more by saying that “A large number of differences have prune up owing to mismatch between names and details in the Aadhaar cards. We can’t make payments without correcting them. Allowing CSCs to correct the discrepancies will help us speed up payments.”
Chief executive of PM KISAN Vivek Aggrawal has asked states to check data on immediate basis to transfer payments to farmers before the festive season begins.
The first instalment was transferred on the basis of any valid identification card which included driving licence, Registration number of Aadhaar was mandatory for the payment of the second instalment, and Aadhaar seeding is mandatory for the third instalment. The first instalment was for December 2018 to March 2019, the second for April to July and the third instalment is for August to November.
The payment of first instalment was quick because no Aadhaar verification was required. The government paid over Rs 13,000 crore to 65.4 million recipients. For the second instalment, the number of recipient so far has been 38.3 million, with a total payment of over Rs 7,600 crore but when it came for the distribution of the third instalment, the number dropped to 14.1 million, with a total payment of just over Rs 2,800 crore.
