The Centre has introduced new layers of checks for the disbursal of PM-Kisan Yojana funds after it was noticed that there were huge amounts of withdrawals by ineligible individuals across the country.
According to latest available official audit figures, around 3 million people ineligible for payouts under Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana had received Rs. 2,900 crore in all since the launch of the scheme.
Under the scheme, the Centre provides income support of Rs. 6,000 per year to every landowning farmer with a valid enrolment, in three equal instalments of Rs. 2,000 each. PM Kisan scheme was launched on 24 February 2019.
The Centre has introduced a series of steps and guidelines to guarantee “enhanced recovery mechanism”, tighter checks in collaboration with the income-tax department & physical verification of beneficiaries.
In India, rich or ineligible people often get benefits to which they are not entitled. The rich get ‘implicit’ subsidies worth Rs one lakh crore, as per the government’s Economic Survey 2015-16 that pointed to the need for better targeting of antipoverty schemes like PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi.
Under the scheme, a beneficiary has to be “a farmer family comprising husband, wife & minor children who own cultivable land as per land records” and the non-farmers are automatically excluded from it.
According to the exclusion guidelines, people who pay income tax or get monthly pension of Rs. 10,000 or above after retiring from government service, former & current ministers, professionals & institutional landowners cannot take benefit of the scheme.
An official on condition of anonymity said that in order to remove ineligible individuals from the PM-Kisan yojana database, a “physical verification module” has been introduced. States now have to physically confirm 5 percent of beneficiaries. To better target the detection of ineligible people, the selection of beneficiaries for random verification has been automated & is software-driven.
In addition, a separate module has been made to verify 10 percent of beneficiaries immediately after payments are made. The official said, “These automated detection module will ramp up the audit process, as per updated guidelines of the scheme”.
The Centre has also intensified the process of combining the PM-KISAN database with India’s income-tax database to remove ineligible people from the scheme.
Moreover, standard operation guidelines have been issued to recover the funds from ineligible beneficiaries, including registration of police complaints. Also, a refund module has been created on the PM-Kisan website, which is used across the states to recover cash from ineligible beneficiaries.
The official said a central project management unit of PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana has been set up at the Centre to facilitate coordination among all the stakeholders.
