Over Rs 4352.49 crore doled out to ineligible farmers under PM-KISAN scheme, reveals Centre

The Union government has revealed that more than Rs 4352.49 crore has been transferred to ineligible beneficiaries under the PM KISAN scheme. This is a 68 per cent increase from February 2022, when the government stated that Rs 2,589.23 crore had been transferred to ineligible farmers since the inception of the scheme in December 2018.

Agriculture Minister Narender Singh Tomar, in response to questions posed by Congress MP Suresh Narayan Dhanorkar, added that only Rs 296.67 crore had been recovered from ineligible beneficiaries. The government also admitted that linking Aadhaar details with PM-Kisan cannot and will not stop such fraudulent transfers.

“Aadhaar authentication, though increases the probability of the beneficiary being eligible, it does not guarantee it as there are other reasons such as the exclusion criteria of the scheme which can render a beneficiary ineligible despite being Aadhaar authenticated,” said Tomar in the response.

He said an SOP has been devised and circulated to states for getting refunds from ineligible beneficiaries and return of funds to the government.

Under the PM-Kisan scheme, an amount of Rs 6,000 per year is transferred in three four-monthly installments of Rs 2,000 directly into the bank accounts of the farmers.

As per the ministry, the eligibility of farmers was initially based on their self-declaration and after verification of their details by states/UTs. Also, only essential fields were made mandatory for registration.

In February, the government had revealed in response to a query sought under the Right to Information Act that Uttar Pradesh had recorded the highest number of ineligible farmers at 14.9 lakh from whom Rs 98 crore were to be recovered. This was followed by Assam, which had 13.35 lakh ineligible farmers from whom a massive Rs 768.3 crore had to be recovered.

The RTI response stated that there were a total of 11.7 crore farmers on the beneficiary list, of which 58.08 lakh were ineligible farmers.

Of the total number of ineligible farmers, 24% (13.73 lakh) were income tax payee farmers. From these ineligible income tax payee farmers, an amount of Rs 1,067 crore had to be recovered.

Following Assam and Uttar Pradesh is Tamil Nadu, which has 8.3 lakh ineligible farmers, from whom Rs 85 crore has to be recovered.

BJP-ruled Karnataka has only 2.4 lakh ineligible farmers but Rs 123 crore has to be recovered from them.

In BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, where there are 2.3 lakh ineligible farmers, Rs 191 crore has to be recovered from them.

The PM-KISAN website states that institutional landholders and farmers’ families, where at least one member is an income tax payer, are ineligible to become a beneficiary under the PM-KISAN scheme.

Under the scheme, an income support of Rs 6,000 per year would be transferred to all land holding farmer families in three equal installments. A family is defined as husband, wife and minor children for the scheme.