No proposal to increase funds given under PM-Kisan: Tomar

The government has no proposal to increase the funds allocated under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) scheme, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar informed Parliament on Tuesday.

PM-Kissan is a central Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme under which financial assistance of Rs 6,000 per annum is provided to all landholding farmer families across the country, subject to certain exclusion criteria. The amount is transferred in three instalments of Rs 2,000 each, directly into the bank accounts of the beneficiary farmers identified by state and union territory governments.

"No sir, there is no proposal to increase the funds allocated under the PM-Kisan scheme," Tomar said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

He said currently Rs 6,000 per annum is given to landholding farmers. And the payment is made on the basis of the Aadhaar-seeded data of beneficiaries, except for Assam, Meghalaya, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, which have been given exemption in this regard up to March 31, 2021.

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Under the PM-Kisan scheme, the funds are not allocated and sanctioned state-wise, he said.

In Rajasthan, around 70,82,035 farmer families have been given the benefit of the scheme so far covering various instalments. An amount of Rs 7,632.695 crore has been spent under the scheme in the state, he said. The number of beneficiaries in the Ganganagar district of Rajasthan covered under the scheme is 1,45,799, while the number of beneficiaries in Dausa district stands at 1,71,661, he added.

Responding to another query on the recovery of funds from ineligible farmers under the PM-Kisan scheme in Maharashtra, the minister said the central government has recovered around Rs 78.37 crore as on March 11 this year. Further, he said PM-Kisan is a continuous and ongoing scheme, and as and when the corrected and error-free data of the eligible beneficiaries are received from states, the requisite amount is transferred to the account of beneficiaries through DBT.

The beneficiaries, whose names are uploaded on the PM-Kisan portal by the states in a particular four-month period/trimester, shall be entitled to receive the benefit for that trimester and for further instalments pertaining to the subsequent trimesters, he added.

Responding to a query if the government plans to include fishermen under the PM-Kisan scheme, Minister of State for Fisheries Pratap Chandra Sarangi said already fishermen are supported under Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampadan Yojana (PMMSY) with the highest ever investment of Rs 20,050 crore. Under PMMSY, livelihood support of Rs 4,500 (including beneficiary's contribution of Rs 1,500 and Rs 3,000 as central and state government share) is provided during the fish ban and lean period for socio-economically backward traditional fishermen families of both marine and inland, he added.