Failing to waive farm loan, MP, Rajasthan tap PM Kisan scheme

With their own loan waiver promises unfulfilled so far, Congress-ruled Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have taken fancy to PM Kisan Nidhi Samman scheme and given details to the Centre of nearly 8.4 million farmers for the payout. Each of these states has surpassed the numbers provided by Bihar, an NDA ruled state with much larger number of farmers.

The Centre is paying Rs 6,000 a year in three instalments to all farmers under the scheme. For this, the states need to upload details of each farmer on the Centre’s portal complete with the Aadhaar number and bank account number. Only 12,000-odd farmers from MP were registered on the Centre’s PM Kisan Nidhi portal till three months ago, after the LS results were declared, while the number stood at about 1.3 million farmers in Rajasthan.

However, MP has submitted details of nearly 3.6 million farmers to the Centre while Rajasthan’s number has swelled to almost 4.8 million. The total number of farmers in Rajasthan is around 5.5 million while the total number is eight million in MP. Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh has submitted details of almost 1.2 million farmers to the Centre for the scheme.


The Centre’s big worry is Bihar, which has close to 13 million potential beneficiary farmers but the state has uploaded details of only 2.9 million farmers so far. This is despite Bihar Agriculture department already having at least 8.7 million registered farmers on its own portal. A senior Bihar official said almost 5.2 million farmers did register for the scheme but many were sent back by the Centre because the names were sent in Hindi. “Under this scheme, the farmer’s name has to be uploaded in English. Farmers who gave their names in Hindi have been asked to correct the same,” a state government official told ET.

Besides, in many cases, the farmer’s name was different in the form from the one in bank account, the wrong IFSC code was given, the village name was wrong or the Aadhaar number was not mentioned. Bihar has been asked by the Centre to make corrections and upload the details again.

Bihar’s record is in stark contrast to that of neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, which has emerged as the star performer under the scheme by uploading details of as many as 16.9 million farmers on the Centre’s portal so far. Nearly 15.5 million out of them have already received the first instalment and 10.8 million farmers have received the second instalment under the PM Kisan Nidhi scheme.

UP CM Yogi Adityanath had last month and asked for details of all 23 million farmers in the state to be provided to the Centre at the earliest. Maharashtra and Gujarat have also performed well under the scheme, as per the assessment of the PMO, as they have uploaded details of almost 6.4m and 4.4 m farmers, respectively.