13 million farmers in UP would miss out on PM Kisan Nidhi due to ID issues, govt sounds alarm

Nearly 13 million farmers in Uttar Pradesh could miss out on the fourth instalment of Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) minimum income support scheme unless errors in their registered names and bank accounts are corrected in the next nine days, the state government has said and urged its officials to launch a special campaign to ensure that all beneficiaries get their due.
UP has the largest number of beneficiaries among all states under the scheme. Out of the 79.7 million beneficiaries across the country, almost 18 million are in UP alone. Nearly 16.7 million of them received the first instalment, 14.9 million got the second and 12.4 million got the third instalment. However, to be eligible for the fourth instalment from December onwards, their bank details must be mandatorily seeded with Aadhaar.

In a letter sent to district magistrates across the state on Thursday, UP’s chief secretary RK Tiwari said that names of 11.1 million farmers uploaded by the state government on the Centre’s portal for the scheme were different from the names mentioned on their Aadhaar cards. “If the name uploaded on the portal is not corrected as per the name on the Aadhaar card, then the farmers would not be able to get the instalment of PM-Kisan due from December 1, 2019,” the letter said.

Besides, the letter said, data of another two million farmers in UP was rejected by the Public Financial Management System (PFMS) because their bank account details were not found to be proper. “Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had reviewed this issue on November 4, 2019 and expressed his unhappiness over the slow progress of redressing the same. He had asked for a campaign to correct the situation by November 30, 2019,” the letter said.

Directing officials to launch a special campaign from November 22-30, the chief secretary asked officials to visit record rooms in each tehsil where records of all 11 million affected farmers are kept and update their names on PM-KISAN portal as per the Aadhaar cards. Bank passbook copies of the other two million farmers are also available in these record rooms and those will also need to be corrected, said Tiwari.

The Centre had exempted the PM-KISAN scheme from the requirement of Aadhaar-seeded data while transferring the first two instalments to farmers across India in December 2018 and April this year. While Aadhaar-seeded data was mandatory to get the third instalment in July, the Centre decided to extend the exemption in October for the third instalment too, saying Aadhaar-seeding was taking time which could delay the release of further instalments and cause discontentment among farmers. Aadhaar-seeding is considered essential to prevent frauds in the scheme.