1,364 crore rupees under PM Kisan went to undeserving beneficiaries: RTI reply

The central government has paid Rs 1,364 crore to 20.48 lakh undeserving beneficiaries under its PM-KISAN scheme. More than 55.58 per cent of them belong to the income tax paying category, based on response for RTI petition filed by Venkatesh Nayak as reported by The Wire.

According to reports, Punjab which has the largest share of unqualified candidates in PM -Kisan accounts for to 23.16 per cent (4.74 lakh) of total undeserving cases, followed by Assam and Maharashtra with 16.87 and 13.99 per cent respectively. A total of 323.85 crore rupees went to undeserving persons in Punjab alone.

"In the final analysis, despite the employment of digital infrastructure to register and make payments to farmers, more than 20 lakh undeserving persons are known to be included in the PM-KISAN Yojana as of July-end, 2020. In some instances, all five installments seem to have been paid out before it was discovered that many of the recipients were undeserving as per the exclusion criteria of the scheme. In other cases, the discovery seems to have been made soon after one or two installments were paid out," said Nayak as reported by The Week.

PM Kisan programme is operational since 2019 and under this scheme income support of 6,000 rupees per year in three installments is given to small and marginal farmer families who are holding a combined land up to 2 hectares. Several categories of farmers are excluded from the scheme like institutional landholders; farmer families in which one or more members is among beneficiaries – former and present holders of constitutional posts; former and present ministers, MPs, MLAs, MLCs, mayors, and chairmen of district panchayats; serving and retired government employees; people receiving over Rs 10,000 as monthly pension; income tax payees and professionals such as doctors, engineers, chartered accountants and architect.