Centre pays Rs 50,850 crore to 8.46 crore farmers in first year of PM-KISAN scheme

The Centre on Saturday said it has disbursed Rs 50,850 crore to 8.46 crore farmers in one year of its Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme aimed to provide additional income to farmers across the country.

The scheme was started last year with a view to provide income support to all landholding farmers' families across the country and enable them to take care of expenses related to agriculture as well as domestic needs, the government said on Saturday.

Under the scheme, an amount of Rs 6,000 per year is transferred in three 4-monthly instalments of Rs 2000 each directly into the bank accounts of the farmers. The scheme was formally launched on February 24, 2019 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a grand function in Uttar Pradesh's Gorakhpur.

An exclusive web-portal www.pmkisan.gov.in has been launched for the scheme. The financial benefits are released to the beneficiaries on the basis of the data of farmers prepared and uploaded by them on the PM-Kisan web-portal.

As the scheme completes a year on February 24, the agriculture ministry shared the progress made under PM-KISAN.

The scheme is effective from December 2018. The cut-off date for identification of beneficiaries with regard to their eligibility was February 1, 2019. The entire responsibility of identification of beneficiaries rests with the state /UT governments.

While the scheme initially provided income support to farmers’ families holding cultivable land up to 2 hectares, its ambit was later expanded to cover all farmer families in the country irrespective of the size of their landholdings. 

Affluent farmers, however, have been excluded from the scheme such as Income Taxpayers in last assessment year, professionals like doctors, engineers, lawyers, Chartered Accountants etc and pensioners drawing at least Rs 10,000 per month.

All instalments falling due on or after December 1, 2019 are being paid only on the basis of Aadhaar authenticated bank data of beneficiaries to ensure genuine beneficiaries and avoid duplicity in payments, except in Assam and Meghalaya besides the UTs of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, which are exempted from this requirement till March this year.

The Central Government has already released more than Rs 50,850 crore till now, the agriculture ministry said.

The total number of beneficiaries to be covered under the scheme is about 14 crore, based on estimates of the Agriculture Census 2015-16. 

As on February 20, 2020, on the basis of the data of beneficiaries uploaded on the PM-Kisan web portal by the state/UT Governments 8.46 crores farmer families have been given the benefits, it added.