The Department of Agriculture has identified as many as 90,000 ineligible beneficiaries under the PM-KISAN Nidhi scheme in the district and recovered ₹7.5 crore so far.
A senior official on anonymity said that out of the 90,000 ineligible beneficiaries, as many as 38,000 were from Villupuram district while 60,000 were from other districts.
The scheme conceived in 2018 aims to give ₹6,000 a year in three instalments to farmers who own up to two hectares of cultivable land.
Preliminary investigations revealed that the bogus beneficiaries from other districts had misused the user ID and password of officials and registered their names under the scheme in Villupuram district.
“A number of ineligible beneficiaries had more than one member from each family who had received the cash subsidy in their bank accounts. A number of these bogus beneficiaries had received more than one instalment in their bank accounts,” the official said.
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As of Sunday, around ₹7.5 crore in cash credited into the bank accounts of 20,500 ineligible beneficiaries had been recovered.
Further recoveries were under way and the total cash subsidy transferred into the bank accounts of ineligible beneficiaries was expected to be recovered in the next 10 days.
The total amount of recovery would be known only at the end of investigation, the official added.
