Government to check if cash reached the farmers

NEW DELHI: The government has decided to conduct physical verification of Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi beneficiaries by picking 5% beneficiaries randomly to rule out any discrepancy in cash transfer in the minimum income support scheme, under which farmers get Rs 6,000 annually in three instalments.

Officials said the exercise will ascertain whether cash has been transferred to eligible farmers or not.

“We will start this exercise in a couple of days. Five per cent beneficiaries from each state will be picked randomly and state nodal officers will conduct physical verification of beneficiaries to ascertain their genuineness. They will have to submit their reports within 45 days,” said a senior agriculture department official, who did not wish to be identified.


So far, the government has given the first instalment of Rs 2,000 to 62.98 million farmers out of around 70 million eligible farmers registered for the scheme.

“The number of beneficiaries in states are in sync with the population of farmers estimated in agri census 2015-16, except in Punjab where beneficiaries have strangely outnumbered the farmers’ population registered in the census. We will check why this has happened,” said the official.

The number of beneficiaries from Punjab is around 1.45 million – about 28% more than the actual number of farmers recorded in the agricultural census of 2015-16.

“There is a big difference in the number. We will look into this as to where is the miscalculation. The physical verification which we are conducting will give us some clue,” said the official.

The agriculture department has estimated the total number of beneficiaries to be 145 million based on the projections of the agriculture census 2015-16 data for 2018-19.