The Ministry of Agriculture on Thursday said that benefits under the PM Kisan scheme have reached about 11.78 crore farmers and funds amounting to Rs 1.82 lakh crore has been released, out of which Rs 1.29 lakh crore has been released during the current Covid-19 pandemic period as of February 22.
PM-KISAN is a central government scheme launched on February 24, 2019, to supplement the financial needs of land-holding farmers. The financial benefit of Rs 6000 per year in three equal installments, every four-month, is transferred into the bank accounts of farmers’ families across the country through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) mode.
The scheme was initially meant for small and marginal farmers (SMFs) having landholding up to 2 hectares but the scope of the scheme was extended to cover all landholding farmers with effect from June 1, 2019.
Process of self-registration of beneficiaries has been made simple and easy through a mobile app, PM KISAN portal and walk-ins via Common Service Centres in order to give the maximum benefit to the farmers.
In the case of the ineligible beneficiary, the recovery mechanism has been made very smooth and transparent, which doesn’t require a Demand Draft or physical cheque to be submitted by the state. The process includes auto-transfer from the state nodal department’s account to the central government account.
A centralized helpdesk has also been introduced in order to support the beneficiaries regarding any issues faced during the registration process or for any other query. Through this initiative, about 11.34 lakh grievances have been received from farmers and more than 10.92 lakh grievances have been redressed by the concerned state authorities.
The beneficiary database in this scheme is being regularly validated with the income tax payee database in order to have an audited and authenticated user base.
To make this whole process more transparent and authenticated, Aadhaar validation has been made compulsory. As of now 11.20 crore beneficiaries’ data is Aadhaar seeded in the scheme.
