Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Rural Development, Panchayat Raj and Food Processing Industries, Shri Narendra Singh Tomar awarded the top-performing States and Districts for their exemplary work with respect to the implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Scheme today. The Minister distributed the awards during an event in New Delhi organized to celebrate the 2nd-year completion of the PM-KISAN scheme. The states/UTs were awarded based on the criteria such as correction of data, addressing farmer grievances, timely physical verification exercise etc.Describing the PM-KISAN as a historic scheme, Shri Tomar said as on 24-02-2021, benefits amounting to Rs. 1,15,638.87 Crore have been transferred to more than 10.75 Crore beneficiaries since the inception of the Scheme. The future generations will remember the initiative as a milestone in the agriculture sector, he added.Praising the hard work of the farmers, the Minister recalled the contribution of the farmers during COVID times. He said regardless of the adversity, the hard work of farmers has the potential to get the country out of any crisis.
Shri Tomar thanked Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi for his vision for the betterment of farmers and agriculture sector. He also thanked all the state governments who have taken necessary steps to implement the schemes in their state.Speaking about the sufficient budgetary allocation under the scheme he requested the state governments to run campaigns for the registration of beneficiaries in their states so that not a single needy farmer remains deprived of the benefits of this scheme.Shri Sanjay Agarwal, Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare thanked the state governments for cooperation in the implementation of the scheme and data collection drive. He said that it is a historical record that in only 18 days of the scheme launch, more than 1 crore beneficiaries were added to the scheme. Shri Kailash Chaudhary, MoS, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers' Welfare, Ministers of Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra and Arunachal Pradesh, Shri Vivek Agrawal, Joint Secretary and CEO PM KISAN along with nodal officers from various state governments were present on the occasion.
About the Scheme:
The Pradhan MantriKisanSammanNidhi (PM-KISAN) Scheme was launched on 24th February, 2019 with a view to providing income support to all landholding Small and Marginal farmers’ (SMF) families across the country, to enable them to take care of expenses related to agriculture and allied activities as well as domestic needs. The Scheme, effective from 1.12.2018, aims to provide a payment of Rs. 6000 per year for the farmers’ families with cultivable land holding up to 2 hectares, subject to certain exclusions. The financial benefit of Rs.6000 is being released by the Central Government in three 4-monthly instalments of Rs. 2000/- over the year directly into the bank accounts of the eligible farmers under Direct Benefit Transfer mode.The cut-off date for the identification of beneficiaries with regard to their eligibility is 01-02-2019. The entire responsibility of identification of beneficiaries rests with the State/UT Governments. An exclusive web-portal www.pmkisan.gov.in has been launched for the Scheme. The financial benefits are released to the beneficiaries on the basis of the data of farmers prepared and uploaded by them on the PM-KISAN web-portal. Beneficiaries are entitled to their benefit from the 4-monthly period in which their name is uploaded by the State Nodal Officer (SNO) in the PM-KISAN Portal.The PM-KISAN Scheme is being implemented with continuous improvements/changes in the shape, modalities and mechanism of the Scheme with the progress of its implementation and its performance over time. Due to the overwhelming response from the farming community, the mandate of the Scheme was further extended to cover all farmers irrespective of the size of their landholding and subject to the prevailing exclusion criteria. The revised Scheme is effective from 01-04-2019.