About 15.2 lakh farmers in Andhra Pradesh are deprived of the payment instalments under the Centrally-sponsored ‘PM Kisan Samman Nidhi’ that provides input subsidy to them.As part of the scheme, the farmers will receive a sum of ₹6,000 per agricultural year in three instalments of ₹2,000 each and the transfer of the 10th instalment is under way since January 1 and will be completed by the end of February.
Registered farmers
According to a survey conducted by LibTech, represented by a team of engineers, social workers, and social scientists who work towards improving public service delivery in the country, there are total 59, 06,097 farmers registered under the PM Kisan, who are entitled to receive an estimated ₹96,03.3 crore. While payments of around ₹82,03.7 crore have been received by the farmers, an estimated ₹13,43.5 crore is yet to be received by 15.2 lakh farmers who have missed either part or full instalments.The reasons cited for their exclusion is mainly rejections by the respective bank or Aadhaar verification issue. Money transfer is done either through account payments or Aadhaar payments. In some cases, the amount transferred to the farmers’ bank account doesn’t get credited due to technical issues, or under ‘account-based payment system’ the bank account details of the farmers are wrongly entered in MIS, or the farmer’s bank account is un-operational for a long time, resulting in blockade or freezing of the account.In the Aadhaar payment system, the rejections happen due to mapping related issues by the National Payment Corporation of India (NPCI).“In the PM Kisan database, there is no clearly mentioned reason why the payments are put on hold, a reason why farmers are not able to resolve the problem and receive their payments,” says Ajay Palle Swaero of LibTech India.A close examination of 33,562 cases of farmers who face ‘bank rejection’ and ‘Aadhaar not verified cases’ in July 2021 revealed that only 12.5% of cases have been resolved in the last six months. “Some of these cases await resolution for more than 1,060 days,” says Chakradhar Buddha of the organisation.Officials of the Agriculture Department need to act on this. The block officials should update the farmers’ bank account details in PM Kisan login, depending on the specific rejection reason for account payment cases and facilitate NPCI mapping for DPT with the banks in the Aadhaar payment cases.
‘Guidelines needed’
“The Agriculture Department should frame guidelines and share them with the frontline officials to ensure that the beneficiaries receive what it due to them,” says Naveen Gajjalagari, another researcher involved in compilation of the data.The department should publish the reasons why the payments are put on hold and specify the process of resolution, and also organise special camps to enroll farmers who are not registered under PM Kisan so far, they suggest.