Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to release the list of eligible farmers on February 24
Armed with the operational guidelines for Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan), several states like Goa are rushing to furnish farmer data to the Central government for direct income transfer of the first tranche of Rs 2,000 into the bank accounts of small and marginal farmers.
Pravesh Sharma, former bureaucrat and co-founder and CEO of Kamatan Farm Tech Pvt Ltd, said all the states have agreed to roll out the scheme.
"Not so surprisingly, there is no state which has not agreed to participate. They would get too much political flak for not doing so. That is why, even West Bengal, Telangana and other states governed by the opposition are rolling it out," said Sharma.
In the Interim Budget announced on February 1, the government announced PM-Kisan scheme to directly transfer Rs 6,000 per farmer family every year in three tranches of Rs 2,000. It has committed to deposit the first instalment for the period between December 1 and March 31 before the end of the fiscal.
Madhav Kelkar, director, Department of Agriculture, Goa, told DNA Money the state government would start uploading data on the PM-Kisan portal on February 21.
"Today we are having a meeting of all the zonal officers. We have to take an undertaking from eligible farmers for the data provided by them. They will also have to give an undertaking that they have not filed any income tax returns," he said.
According to him, the state officials will be "solely responsible" for the eligibility of farmer for the income package. "We cannot give direct income to anyone who is not eligible. We will soon be beginning the process of taking undertakings from farmers for this."
Kelkar said Goa's agriculture department will be giving two-three days to farmers to provide information for the income package.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to release the list of eligible farmers on February 24.
The guidelines issued last week state, "For the purpose of exclusion, states have to get self-declaration from the beneficiaries."
According to the rules put out, the "essential attributes" of farmers to be collected by states include details such as name, type of identity (this could be Aadhaar number and in absence of the same it could be Aadhaar enrolment number or any other ID proof like voter ID, etc), gender, category, IFSC Code, bank account number or any other such information.
The PM-Kisan is a direct income scheme under which the Central government will transfer Rs 6,000 into the bank accounts of 12 crore marginal and small farmers, owning up to two hectares of land, every year in three instalments.
Kelkar said he was very confident of putting up the required data for the farmer's scheme on the portal created for it by the deadline set by the Central government.
Sharma of Kamatan Farm said since a lot of farmer data was already available, it may not take much time for the states to upload it on the portal.
The government is also looking at alternate implementation mechanism to assess the eligibility of farmers in Northeastern states that have community land ownership. This is will be approved by a committee of Union ministers. Based on its recommendations, a disbursement method will be worked for farmers in the region.
COMING SOON
- The operational guidelines for PM-Kisan were released last week on its portal
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to release the list of eligible farmers on February 24
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