The Nagaland government has identified 524 ineligible beneficiaries of Prime Minister Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme and has started the process to recover Rs 45.08 lakh from them, a senior official of the state Agriculture department said.
After Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, in July 2021, informed Parliament about the existence of bogus farmers in Nagaland, the state Agriculture department initiated measures to identify such farmers, Agriculture Production Commissioner, Nagaland, Y Kikheto Sema told media persons in Kohima on Wednesday.
In the process, he said that the department had detected that the list contains names of retired government servants, students, and urban dwellers. The 524 bogus beneficiaries were detected from 10 districts and sub-divisions and their registration has been canceled, he said.
The department has directed all agriculture officers in the districts and sub-divisions to immediately initiate the recovery and the process is going on, Tomar said, adding that the department has so far recovered more than Rs 5 lakh. “We have also directed to further identify bogus beneficiaries in all the remaining districts and sub-divisions,” he added.
Against detection of bogus beneficiaries, genuine farmers shall be registered/replaced, he said. Under PM-KISAN, a farmer’s welfare scheme, eligible farmers, irrespective of land holding received Rs 6,000 per year from Central Government as income support to meet the farming input expenses.
The fund is transferred by the Union Ministry of Finance directly to the farmer's account in three installments. In Nagaland, the PM-KISAN scheme was launched on February 25, 2019, and as of Wednesday, altogether 2,02,113 farmers have received a total amount of Rs 316,12,16,000, he said.
The e-KYC done so far is 1,51,365 which is 74.89 percent of the total beneficiaries and one of the highest e-KYC verified beneficiaries in the country.
