Congress demands the Centre to stop taking back money from farmers of the PM-KISAN scheme
The Congress said on Thursday that the Centre is sending notices to farmers who are not eligible for the PM-KISAN scheme to take back the money that was given to them. The Congress also demanded that the Centre stop taking money back from ‘poor annadaatas’ right away.
The party in opposition said that the government is ‘waiving loans worth lakhs of crores’ for its friends in the business world, but it is taking money back from farmers.
At a press conference at the AICC headquarters here, Congress spokesman Akhilesh Pratap Singh said that the central government has started taking back the money by saying that farmers are not eligible for the Kisan Samman Nidhi.
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‘This move by the central government is now called ‘Kisan Apman Nidhi’ instead of ‘Kisan Samman Nidhi.’ Singh said, ‘The government is taking back the money it gave to the poor ‘annadaatas’ of the country because it is giving away loans worth lakhs of crores to its industrialist friends.’
Before the Lok Sabha elections in 2019, when the Modi government started PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi, it ‘hurriedly’ took the bank account numbers of farmers, he said, so that the money could get to them before the elections.
‘Now, the central government is telling people who got money under the Kisan Samman Nidhi but were not eligible to do so that they should give the money back. The government is also sending farmers notices that the money will be taken back. The process of recovery that says about two crore farmers across the country are not eligible should be stopped right away,’ Singh said.
The government said that money from the PM-KISAN scheme was given to people who weren’t eligible, and states have been told how to get their money back. The Non-Tax Receipt Portal (NTRP) system has been set up so that any individual farmer can return the money through the web portal.
The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana (PM-KISAN), which was announced in February 2019, is a central scheme that aims to help landholding farmer families with money, as long as they meet certain requirements. This will help them pay for expenses related to agriculture and activities related to it, as well as household needs.
Singh also said that Uttar Pradesh should be called a drought-stricken state because this year it has rained 44% less than usual, which has killed all Kharif crops.
‘Along with this, as soon as the state is declared to be in a drought, all of the farmers in the state should be paid for their crops. The interest on all loans to farmers for things like farming tools, fertiliser, seeds, and pesticides should be put off for six months,’ Singh said.
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The Congress leader said that before the 2022 assembly elections, the Uttar Pradesh government started giving eligible cardholders free food grains as a way to sway their votes. The government has since stopped this programme.
‘Now that the goal has been reached and the vote has been taken, free food has also stopped,’ he said.
‘Unemployment and poverty have gotten worse. The ability of the poor to buy things has gone down even more. Data from the NCRB shows that the number of suicides by day labourers has gone up. The fact that the state government shut down the free food programme at this time shows how selfish and cruel its politics are,’ he said.
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