The Department of Agriculture has taken measures to address the issue of mapping of the beneficiaries of the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme and other problems hampering effective implementation of the Centrally-sponsored scheme.
In response to a report that appeared in The Hindu, the department said for bank account corrections, records were sent to the field staff for identification of the beneficiaries and awareness was also being created among farmers to get their bank details in the portal corrected by approaching the authorities dealing with the scheme.
Extensive campaigns were being conducted to sensitise the farmers on the issue, besides taking up the issue with the State Level Bankers’ Committee and nodal banks to resolve the failure payments in DBT schemes.
For ‘Aadhaar’ corrections too, the records are shared with the field staff to address the issue on a priority basis. The Centre also introduced self-registration mode for farmers in October last year and communicated the Standard Operating Process for its operation.
It said due to various exclusion criteria for the scheme, 13,76,791 beneficiary records were pending for payment and the reasons include PFMS-rejected (2,18,987), duplicate bank account (8,166), Aadhar-failed (97,215), Stop payment (3,11,158), death/ineligibility (25,626), Income Tax payee (99,106), Self-registered rejections (7,645), recent lists opened for payment process (76,743) and data shared with the Centre for webland mapping (5,32,145).
It said due to login issues with the PM Kisan portal in the last 15 days, the field staff were not able to complete the approvals and the issue was being monitored by the State office for quick redressal.
The department said only 2.18 lakh records were pending for payment due to NPCI (National Payment Corporation of India) mapping issues and the remaining issues were beyond its purview and that it had informed the Centre for further persuasion as per the PM Kisan scheme guidelines.
