In a major fraud, financial assistance worth Rs 442 crore went to four lakh ‘ineligible’ and ‘dead’ farmers in Karnataka under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), a flagship scheme of the ruling BJP government.
Authorities are going after these farmers to recover the money they received.
Under PM-KISAN, launched in 2019, the Union government gives every landholding farmer family Rs 6,000 annually. On top of this, the BJP government in Karnataka pays an additional Rs 4,000 from its coffers.
Farming households that pay income tax and have institutional landholding are among the key exclusion criteria under PM-KISAN based on which ineligible farmers were identified.
“When the scheme was launched, there was a self-registration option for farmers. This was misused,” Agriculture Commissioner Sharat B told DH. He has written to banks on initiating action to recover money from the ineligible farmers.
“All deputy commissioners have been asked to assist banks in the recovery,” he said, adding that such frauds will not be possible henceforth thanks to the government tightening verification processes.
As many as 3.83 lakh farmers had enrolled themselves for PM-KISAN under the self-registration option. What prompted authorities to dig deeper was the unusually high number of enrolments from Chitradurga district, which “called for detailed verification of registered records,” Sharat pointed out in his letter to the State Level Bankers Committee.
As a result, 1.06 lakh farmers who used the self-registration option were found to be ineligible. Self-registration is not open now, Sharat said.
The government went on to identify 91,969 beneficiaries who pay income tax and another 1.99 lakh farmers who do not qualify based on landholding. Plus, 3,312 dead farmers also received money.
So far, authorities have managed to recover Rs 7.26 crore.
The PM-KISAN scheme has covered 58.42 lakh farmers in Karnataka and has become a mainstay in the BJP’s campaigns.
Farmer leader Kuruburu Shanthakumar, however, said the scheme does little to help farmers. “A farmer needs six bags of fertiliser costing Rs 1,800 each. That’s Rs 10,800. So, money under the PM-KISAN scheme is just about enough to cover this cost,” he said, pointing to rising diesel costs and GST on farm equipment. “And, we were told that farmers’ income would be doubled by 2022,” he scoffed.