The number of farmers who received the 11th instalment of funding from the Prime Minister’s Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) has decreased by 67%, according to the Agriculture Ministry’s response to an RTI request from activist Kanhaiya Kumar. The main Central programme PM-KISAN was introduced in 2019 and offers qualified farming families 6,000 rupees (Rs. 6,000) per year in three instalments of Rs. 2,000 each.
Only 3.87 crore farmers received the 11th instalment of 2,000 in their accounts in May-June 2022, according to the Agriculture Ministry’s instalment-wise payment success report. When compared to the 11.84 crore farmers who received the first instalment in February 2019, just before the Lok Sabha elections, this represents a significant decrease. In October 2022, the most recent 12th instalment was paid out.
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The pattern of a drop began with the sixth instalment, which was received by 9.87 crore farmers, down from 11.84 crore farmers in the first instalment. There were 9.30, 8.59, 7.66, and 6.34 crore people who received the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth instalments, respectively.
The data revealed that in Andhra Pradesh, the number of beneficiaries came down from 55.68 lakh to 28.2 lakh. In Bihar, the number of beneficiaries reached seven lakh from 83 lakh, while in Chhattisgarh, just two lakh farmers received the eleventh instalment, instead of 37 lakh people who got the amount in the first instalment.
In Gujarat, a state where elections are approaching, 63.13 lakh farmers received funding in 2019, but only 28.41 lakh did so in 2022. 19.73 lakh farmers in Haryana received the first instalment, and 11.59 lakh farmers received the eleventh. The number decreased in Maharashtra from 1.09 crore in 2019 to 37.51 lakh in 2022. While 88.63 lakh farmers in Madhya Pradesh received assistance in 2019, just 12,053 of them did so in 2022. 627 farmers in Meghalaya received it in 2022 compared to 1.95 lakh farmers in 2019. The figure in Punjab dropped from 23.34 lakh to 11.31 lakh.
In Uttar Pradesh, 2.6 crore farmers availed of the aid in 2019, and it decreased by half to 1.26 crore in 2022. In West Bengal, according to the data, 45.63 lakh farmers received the amount in 2019 and no farmers got the money since the sixth instalment.
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This issue has been brought up by the state administration with Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar.
Ashok Dhawle, All India Kisan Sabha president termed the data as ‘extremely shocking.’ “Two-thirds of the farmers have not received the payment according to this data in 2022. There is no logical reason for why such a decrease in the number of beneficiaries. It shows that the Centre is trying to slowly wind up this scheme. This scheme is not at all a substitute for the legally guaranteed MSP. This scheme was another jumla to skirt the real issues the farmers are facing,” Dr Dhawale said.
The Ministry claimed that under the PM-KISAN scheme, no money was transferred to any fraudulent beneficiaries. It added that benefits were only paid out after receiving 100% accurate farmer data from the States, which was verified through Aadhaar or the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) database.
