How did the money from PM Kisan Samman Nidhi reach the ineligible people?

The RTI has revealed that under the Prime Minister Kisan Samman Nidhi, nearly 20.48 lakh unqualified people received the amount received by the farmers.

Even more shocking is that among these beneficiaries, 55 per cent are farmers who collect tax. In fact, the government excluded tax-paying farmers from the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana. Despite this, how such a large number of taxpayer farmers got involved in this is a big question.

Out of the total 20.48 lakh ineligible beneficiaries, there are more than 11.38 lakh people who fall in the income tax payer’s category.

It has been revealed from RTI that the government treasury has lost Rs 1,364 crore due to these unqualified beneficiaries. The Ministry of Agriculture has given this information under RTI.

According to the information received from RTI, 44.41 percent also have such unqualified people who do not meet the conditions fixed for this scheme.

Despite being linked to Aadhaar, how did the tax payer become the beneficiary?

Aadhaar number was mandatory for the beneficiaries of this scheme and money had to be transferred to their accounts. Also, when the government has complete data on taxpayers, then how did taxpayers join this scheme? Questions are arising about this.

Siraj Hussain, former agriculture secretary, says, “The government has a database of all taxpayers. Every taxpayer’s Aadhaar is also linked to the PAN card. The Supreme Court said in 2018 that the Aadhaar decision was, however, as an identification. But Aadhaar is ‘voluntary’, but it is mandatory for government subsidies, benefits and services. The Supreme Court did not allow the private sector to use Aadhaar. “

He says, “Since the PM farmer is also a grant to the land holders, it was probably possible for the government to get PM farmer’s data from the income tax database to exclude income taxpayers from the PM Kisan Nidhi Scheme.”

The Agriculture Ministry has stated that two categories of ineligible beneficiaries have been detected. The first category is of such ineligible beneficiaries who do not meet the eligibility conditions of this scheme. There are people in the second category who pay income tax.

Venkatesh Nayak, the program head of the Access to Information of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, has gathered this information about PM Kisan Nidhi under RTI.

Says Nayak, “In fact, more than the statistics given by the government, a large number of unqualified people can join this scheme.”

According to Venkatesh Nayak, “The government has stated in its response that more than half of the disqualified beneficiaries (55 per cent) are people who pay income tax. The remaining 44.41 per cent includes such ineligible people who are eligible for this scheme. To meet the stated conditions.

Nayak says that the fault of common people is less in this. People did not even know what the criteria were. However, government officials knew the rules, but in many places they did not work properly.

They say that at first the government tried that such unqualified beneficiaries themselves should return this money. But, it was not possible to do so, even in the era of epidemic, where people’s earnings have been affected.

Says Nayak, “Now the government is trying to remove the names of these ineligible beneficiaries and recover this money.”

What are the schemes and what are the eligibility conditions?

Under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana, small and marginal farmers are given 6,000 rupees every year. This amount goes directly to the account of the farmers.

Marginal farmer means farmers who cultivate land up to one hectare i.e. 2.5 acres.

In the definition of small farmers, there are farmers who cultivate land from one hectare to two hectares, that is, five acres.

Income tax payers are excluded from the purview of this scheme. Also, such retired people, whose pension is 10,000 rupees or more, also cannot get the benefit of this scheme.

The central government launched this scheme in 2019.

Hurriedly launched scheme?

Experts believe that the government launched this scheme without preparing well. Questions have also been raised at the time of launching this scheme.

The PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana was announced in the interim budget presented on February 1 for 2019-20. However, the scheme was announced to be implemented from the back date i.e. December 1, 2018.

Venkatesh Nayak told the BBC, “The government hurriedly launched this scheme. The local administration did not notice which farmers are eligible for this scheme and which are not. That is why such a big A number of unqualified people joined the scheme.

They say that in the initial phase, the verification of people was not done in it. The government launched the scheme a month before the elections and in such a situation, the officials at the local level took the slightest action and sent the names of people to this scheme.

Non-involvement of tenants and tenants

The biggest drawback of this scheme is that it includes only those people who own the land.

Venkatesh Nayak says, “Farmers who are renters or share farmers are not included in this. This is a major drawback of this scheme, because the condition of such farmers is worst, which is either rent. But they do farming or sharecroppers and who do not have their own agricultural land. “

However, this task is not easy. There is no record of tenants or tenants on rent and their data cannot be verified. In such a situation, it is very difficult to include them in the scheme.

Total beneficiary and government expenditure

For this scheme launched by the Modi government in February last year, the government has made a provision to spend 75,000 crore rupees every year.

Recently, the government has added Rs 2,000-2,000 to the beneficiary farmers account as the seventh installment of this scheme. As the seventh installment, the Modi government has transferred a total of 18,000 crore rupees to farmers’ accounts.

During the program of inserting the seventh installment of PM Kisan Samman Nidhi in the farmers’ account, PM Modi said that under this scheme till now the government has put Rs 1.10 lakh crore in the accounts of farmers.

Nayak says that till the time of RTI entry, PM Kisan had a total of 9–9.5 crore beneficiaries. Later this figure has crossed 10 crores.

‘Government to release monthly data of PM Samman’

Siraj Hussain suggests, “The government should release the monthly data of the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi so that the researchers can analyze this data and make suggestions for improvements in this scheme.”

Satyendra Chauhan, who runs a public service center in a village in Uttar Pradesh, told that most unqualified people joined it in the initial period. They say that earlier any person would easily get involved in this scheme. At that time neither the details were verified nor was any investigation being done. Initially, only the Department of Agriculture was doing this work.

However, they say that it has not been easy to join the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi now. He says, “Now the accountant verifies the details of these characters. Only after the list of the characters is approved from the tehsil is it sent to the Department of Agriculture.

They say that even after the beneficiary’s name is approved, the money in the account comes only after 3-4 months.