The Centre on Friday said as there were many duplicate entries in the list of PM Kisan beneficiaries, they had to be removed. The statement comes after strong opposition from farmers as well as Opposition leaders over reduction in the flagship scheme.
The government clarified that every eligible beneficiary of Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi will continue to get benefits of the scheme and hence virtually there is no cut in the budget.
According to Union Budget 2023 estimate, the allocation of PM Kisan scheme, has dropped by Rs 8,000 crores — at a time when the farming community was eagerly waiting for a hike.
Let us tell you that under the scheme, the government provides financial assistance of Rs. 6000 annually to eligible farmers in three equal instalments of Rs 2,000. The money is directly transferred to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.
Further speaking about the ineligible beneficiaries in the list, the Centre said ineligible beneficiaries including deceased have been removed after proper verification and validation of the beneficiary’s data.
Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Finance Minister in the Lok Sabha said that all eligible beneficiaries will continue to get the benefit of PM Kisan implying that there was no impact of the budget slash.
Sitharaman told the opposition that there is a lot of data updation going on in the scheme and deduplication examination of the beneficiaries is being done by the Agriculture ministry. She added that every eligible beneficiary will keep getting the benefit of the scheme, therefore, there is no reduction.
Regarding increasing the scheme amount, Agriculture Minister Narendra Tomar said that there was no proposal to raise the amount from 6,000 per year under PM-Kisan.
The finance minister further said that process of doubling the farmer’s income is still under process. Sitharaman added that “State Bank of India (SBI) report claimed that farmer’s income has doubled in some states for some crops in FY2022 as compared to 2018. She said the income of cotton farmers in Karnataka and soybean farmers in Maharashtra have doubled.
She also said that in other cases, the income didn’t double, but has gone up by 1.7 times.
