Rs. 8.51 Cr paid to ineligible persons in J&K
NL Correspondent
New Delhi, January 12: The Prime Minister, Narendra Modi on December 25, the birth anniversary of late Atal Bihari Vajpayee in whose memory, the PM said the country is also celebrating Good Governance Day, declared that his Government had deposited Rs. 18,000 crores in the bank accounts of more than 9 crore (90 million) farmer households under the PM-KISAN Yojana.
But the facts revealed in an official document say otherwise. Rs. 1,364.13 crores have gone to wrong hands i.e. the money has been paid to ineligible persons and income tax payee farmers since the commencement of PM-KISAN Yojana in 2019 till July 2020.
Government’s own data indicates money went into the wrong hands. According to recent media reports, proceedings have been initiated to recover these funds transferred to undeserving persons.
PM had ridiculed the poor performance of previous Governments in delivering developmental funds earmarked for the marginalised and disadvantaged segments of society. Contrasting such past performance with changes brought about by the NDA Government through the adoption of digital mode of direct funds transfer to the bank accounts of beneficiaries, the PM asserted that money did not go into the wrong hands anymore.
When launched in 2019, the PM-KISAN Yojana was to cover only small and marginal farmers owning less than 2 hectares of land. Later, the scheme was expanded to include all farmers irrespective of the size of their landholdings. However according to the revised operational guidelines of the Yojana, the following categories of farmers are to be excluded from receiving payouts:
1) Institutional landholders;
2) Farmer families in which one or more members belong to the following categories:
- a) Ex and present holders of constitutional posts;
- b) Ex and present ministers at the Central and State level, MPs, MLAs, MLCs, former and present Mayors of Municipal Corporations and former and present Chairpersons of District Panchayats;
- c) All serving and retired officers and employees of Central and State Governments, Central and State public sector enterprises and autonomous institutions under Government as well as regular employees of Local Bodies except Class IV and Group D employees;
- d) All pensioners receiving monthly pension of RS. 10,000 or more, excluding multi-tasking staff, Class IV and Group D employees;
- e) All persons who paid Income Tax in the last assessment year; and
- f) Professionals such as doctors, engineers, chartered accountants and architects registered with professional bodies and carrying out practices.
The main findings from a preliminary analysis of these datasets are given below.
Number of recipients: overall trends
- A total of 20,48,634 (2.04 million) undeserving persons across the country had received PM-KISAN payouts until 31st July, 2020;
- More than half (55.58%) of these undeserving persons belong to the “income tax payee category. “The remaining 44.41% belong to the “ineligible farmers’ category. Although the datasets do not mention how many of them are covered under which exclusion criteria listed above, it is clear that IT payee farmers are being treated as a separate category. So it must be presumed that the remaining recipients belong to one or more categories mentioned in the exclusion criteria mentioned above;
Amount of payouts: overall trends
- The datasets supplied by the CPIO indicates, a whopping Rs 1,364.13 crores was paid out to undeserving recipients belonging to these two categories;
- At Rs. 985.09 crores payouts to “IT payee farmers” constituted 72.28% of the total even though this category includes only 55.58% of the total number of recipients, as shown above. Payouts to “ineligible farmers” at Rs. 379.03 crores amounted to 27.78% of the total.
Analysis of payouts (both categories included)
- With Rs. 323.85 crores, Punjab topped the list of States and UTs where undeserving persons (both categories of farmers) received the largest amount of payouts (23.74% of the total). Maharashtra with Rs. 216.90 crores takes 2nd position (15.90%), followed by Gujarat in 3rd place with Rs. 162.34 crores (11.90%), UP occupying 4th position with Rs. 146.01 cores (10.70%) and Karnataka taking 5th place with Rs. 77.44 crores (5.67%). Together, these five States account for more than 2/3rds of the total payouts (Rs. 926.54 crores) made to “ineligible” and IT payee farmers”;
- Among States, Sikkim received the smallest amount of payouts at Rs. 10,000 (paid to only one “IT payee farmer”). Meghalaya (Rs. 92,000), Arunachal Pradesh (Rs. 5,40,000), Nagaland (Rs. 6,34,000), Mizoram (Rs. 11,16,000) and Goa (Rs. 50,46,000) figure at the bottom of the pile of States which received the smallest amount of payouts;
Among UTs, J&K received the highest amount of payouts at Rs. 8.51 crores followed by Delhi receiving Rs. 55.80 lakhs. Interestingly undeserving farmers in Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu received Rs. 42.68 lakhs which was more than the combined total of payouts received by the bottom four States mentioned above. Among the UTs undeserving farmers in Lakshadweep received the smallest amount of payouts (Rs. 14,000).
Conclusion
In the final analysis, despite the employment of digital infrastructure to register and make payments to farmers, more than 20 lakh persons ineligible and undeserving persons are known to be included in the PM-KISAN Yojana as of end-July 2020. In some instances all five instalments seem to have been paid out before it was discovered that many of the recipients were undeserving as per the exclusion criteria of the scheme.
According to media reports, proceedings have already been launched in some districts to recover payments made to undeserving recipients.
