The Union Government will disburse next installment of PM-Kisan, its cash transfer scheme for the farmers, on 9th August, totaling Rs 19,000 crore to about 90 million farmers. Under PM-Kisan, the government will be providing the annual income support of Rs 6,000 to every land-owning farmer with a valid enrollment.
About PM Kisan Scheme
The money is paid in 3 equal cash transfer of Rs 2,000, once every 4 months. The scheme was launched on 24th February 2019. In the last installment, which paid in the month of May this year, the government disbursed slightly over Rs 19,000 crore to 90 million farm households. So far, the Union government have paid nearly Rs 1.15 lakh crore under this scheme. In reply to the question of parliament, the farm minister Narendra Singh Tomar said that nearly 4.2 million people, who were not eligible for the payouts under this scheme were given Rs 2,900 crore since the scheme’s roll-out.
Tomar said that the states, where ineligible people received money, have been asked to recover amount according to the guidelines in force. Any farmer can enroll for PM-Kisan by applying at the local revenue offices or a state’s nodal officer for the scheme, who is nominated by the state government. Farmers can self-register through PM-Kisan portal & common service centers, a network of the public services offices. ‘The identification of the beneficiaries is the responsibility of state government’. States have to upload the data to a centralized public finance management system, a platform that auto verifies the back accounts & checks biometric Aadhar details of the beneficiaries sent by states.
These are then sent back to the states for physical signatures. Meanwhile, in a virtual interaction with the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Ann Yojana (PM-GKAY) beneficiaries in Gujarat, PM Modi said that the scheme helped lakhs of poor people during the Covid pandemic. ‘Since Independence, almost every government had talked about providing the cheap food to poor. The scope & budget of cheap ration schemes increased year after year, but the effect it should have had remained limited. The free ration was made available to more than 80 crore people, under this scheme during Covid pandemic with an expenditure of more than Rs 2 lakh crore.
