Clerical mistakes, sloppy verification cause long delay for 42,000 farmers in Agra

AGRA: Clerical mistakes and sloppy verification have cost long delay for around 42,000 farmers in Agra district who are yet to receive their first installment of Rs 2,000 under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) scheme. The scheme was announced during the 2019 interim Union Budget on February 1. Taking cognizance of the complaints made by farmers, the state government has now directed the district administration to correct the clerical mistakes. A re-verification process will begin soon as part of clearing the first installment.
Under the scheme, financial benefits of Rs 6,000 per year was declared for all small and marginal farmers having total cultivable holding of up to two hectares. The amount will be provided in three equal installments of Rs 2,000 each in a period of four months in the financial year. The benefit will be admissible for transfer with effect from December 1, 2018.
To the benefit of the PM-Kisan scheme, farmers were required to make an online application.
In Agra district, over 3 lakh applications were received on the PM-Kisan portal. The district administration after verification of the applications had forwarded details of 2,33,002 farmers eligible to be benefitted under the scheme to the central government. Out of these, 1,91,012farmers have received two installments of Rs 2,000 each while 41,990 farmers have not received the amount in their bank accounts.
Farmers who have not received the monetary benefit are making rounds of the sub-division offices and agriculture department.
District agriculture officer Rampravesh Verma said, “Due to some clerical mistakes and discrepancies in details submitted by the applicants, around 21% of the farmers have not received benefits under the PM-Kisan scheme. Revenue clerks have been asked to conduct re-verification of such farmers and correct mistakes in their eligibility report. We will ensure each and every eligible farmer gets the benefit of the scheme”.
Major reasons restricting transfer of benefit under the PM-Kisan scheme include wrong Aadhaar card or bank account number and faults related to land record of farmers. In some cases, bank accounts of farmers have been non-functional for a long time.
During the verification process, 65,000 applications were rejected while a large number of fake applications had surfaced. Fictitious applications under the names of Narendra Modi and Yogi Adityanath were also detected. Multiple online applications with same name and address were also identified and cancelled.