Agriculture Minister Shri Narendra Singh Tomar informed Parliament on Tuesday that the government has no plans to increase the funds allocated under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme.
PM-KISAN is a central Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme that provides ₹ 6,000 per year in financial assistance to all landholding farmer families across the country, subject to certain exclusion criteria. The money is transferred in three instalments of ₹ 2,000 each, directly into the bank accounts of farmers identified by state and union territory governments as beneficiaries.
And, with the exception of Assam, Meghalaya, Jammu & Kashmir, and Ladakh, which have been granted exemption in this regard until March 31, 2021, payments are made on the basis of Aadhaar-seeded data of beneficiaries. According to him, funds under the PM-KISAN scheme are not allocated and sanctioned on a state-by-state basis.
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So far, the scheme has benefited approximately 70,82,035 farmer families in Rajasthan through various instalments. According to him, a total of ₹ 7,632.695 crore has been spent in the state under the scheme. The scheme has 1,45,799 beneficiaries in Rajasthan’s Ganganagar district, and 1,71,661 beneficiaries in Rajasthan’s Dausa district, he added.
In response to another question about the recovery of funds from ineligible farmers under the PM-KISAN scheme in Maharashtra, the minister stated that as of March 11 this year, the union government had recovered approximately ₹ 78.37 crore.
Furthermore, he stated that PM-KISAN is a continuous and ongoing scheme, and that as and when corrected and error-free data of eligible beneficiaries is received from states, the requisite amount is transferred to the beneficiaries’ accounts via DBT.
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Beneficiaries whose names are uploaded by states on the PM-KISAN portal during a specific four-month period/trimester will be eligible for benefits for that trimester as well as subsequent instalments, he told.
In response to a question about whether the government intends to include fishermen in the PM-KISAN scheme, Minister of State for Fisheries Pratap Chandra Sarangi stated that fishermen are already supported under the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampadan Yojana (PMMSY), which has the highest ever investment of ₹ 20,050 crore.
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During the fish ban and lean period, PMMSY provides a livelihood support of ₹ 4,500 (including beneficiary contribution of ₹ 1,500 and ₹ 3,000 as central and state government share) to socioeconomically backward traditional fishermen families from both the sea and the land, he added.
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