New Delhi, Feb 24: The Ministry of Agriculture on Thursday said that benefits under PM Kisan scheme have reached to 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 on February 22.
PM-KISAN is a central government’s scheme launched on February 24, 2019 to supplement financial needs of land holding farmers. Financial benefit of Rs 6000 per year in three equal instalments, 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 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 mobile app, PM KISAN portal and walk-ins via Common Service Centres in order to give the maximum benefit to the farmers.
In case of ineligible beneficiary, recovery mechanism has been made very smooth and transparent, which doesn’t require Demand Draft or physical cheque to be submitted by the state.
The process includes auto transfer from state nodal department’s account to 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 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. (IANS)
