Assam government will have to recover Rs 554 crore which was transferred to 8.35 lakhs ineligible recipients under the PM-KISAN scheme.
In the parliament on Tuesday, July 20, Minister of Agriculture Narendra Singh Tomar stated that a total amount of Rs 2,992 crore, received by 42.16 lakh ineligible farmers under the PM-KISAN scheme, has to be recovered.
The majority of these ineligible farmers who received the money come from Assam.
Other states from where ineligible farmers who got the welfare money hail from include Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Maharashtra, UP, and Gujarat.
Under the welfare scheme, the central government transfers Rs 6,000 annually to lakhs of farmers across the country in three installments of Rs 2,000 each.
There is an eligibility criterion that a farmer needs to fulfill to avail of the scheme, under which a farmer should not be paying any income tax.
Tamil Nadu has 7.22 lakh, ineligible recipients. 5.62 lakh come from Punjab and 4.45 lakh from Maharashtra, whereas 2.65 lakh and 2.36 lakh come from Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, respectively.
The list for state-wise recovery amounts besides Assam is Punjab at Rs 437 crore and Maharashtra at Rs 358 crore. Rs 340 crore, Rs 258 crore, and Rs 220 Crore have to be recovered from Tamil Nadu, UP, and Gujarat, respectively.
Minister Tomar said, "The structure of the scheme comprises of mechanism for exclusion of errors on the basis of continuous verification and validation of data of beneficiaries by various authorities like Aadhaar, PFMS, or Income Tax database. However, during the process of verification, it was found that benefit of the Scheme was transferred to some ineligible beneficiaries including some income tax payee farmers."
He added, "Standard Operation Guidelines have been issued for recovering money from ineligible beneficiaries. Standard Operational Guidelines for the identification of Income Tax Payees have been prepared and circulated to the States. Caution Advisory has been sent to the States to adopt measures during the registration and verification of farmers under the PM-KISAN scheme and Standard Operational Guidelines for Physical Verification of PM-KISAN beneficiaries have been circulated to the State Governments."
