The Centre has transferred Rs 38,282 crore to farmers under the PM-KISAN scheme till August this fiscal, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar informed the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
There is no proposal to either advance the payment of the remaining installments or increase the amount from the current level, he added. Under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana (PM-KISAN), the government is providing Rs 6,000 per annum in three equal installments to 14 crore farmers. The amount is directly transferred into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries through the direct benefit transfer (DBT) mode.
Responding to a series of queries raised by MPs on this initiative, Tomar said an amount of Rs 38,282 crore has been transferred to various beneficiaries under the scheme during April-August period of this fiscal. “Around 9.24 crore farmer families have been benefited under the PM-KISAN Scheme,” he said, adding there is no proposal for advance payment of the remaining instalments for the 2020-21 fiscal.
There is also no proposal to increase the amount from the current level to Rs 12,000 annually, he added. On any complaints or corruption in implementation of the scheme, the minister in a separate reply said the Centre is aware of the recent case of fake PM-KISAN accounts siphoning funds meant for beneficiaries in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu.
The Tamil Nadu government has informed that ineligible beneficiaries were registered on the PM-KISAN portal in few districts by stealing the user name credentials, he said, adding the state government has taken action in the matter.
“A sum of Rs 47 crore has been recovered by the state till date. Crime Branch CID (CB-CID) of Tamil Nadu has registered 10 cases and apprehended 16 accused in the case. The District Level and Block level PM-KISAN login IDs have been deactivated,” Tomar said.
Further, services of 19 contractual staff who have been reported to be involved in these illegal activities in the districts of Villupuram, Kallakurichi and Cuddalore were terminated, he said.
That apart, three block level assistant directors of agriculture who were considered primarily responsible for lack of supervision and not informing about the fraudulent activities to the superiors were suspended, he added.
“According to the PM-KISAN Scheme, the entire responsibility of identifying the eligible landholder farmer family is of the state and union territories,” Tomar informed the Lower House.
Besides, the minister said the Centre has received some complaints of certain eligible farmers not receiving the benefit of this scheme in Satara district of Maharashtra. He said 32 villages comprising 5,964 beneficiaries in Satara faced the issue of non-receipt of benefit under PM-KISAN due to errors in data entry.
However, functionality to correct the locations of beneficiaries on the PM-KISAN portal has been provided by the National Informatics Centre (NIC). The correction activity was initiated immediately for updating the data of the respective beneficiaries, he added.
Tomar explained that PM-KISAN is a continuous and ongoing scheme in which the financial benefits are transferred to the bank accounts of the identified beneficiaries as and when their correct and verified data is uploaded by the concerned states/union territories on the web portal.
The data of beneficiaries so uploaded by them undergoes a multi-level verification and validation by various agencies, including banks, and only then the amount is released into the bank accounts, he added.
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