Under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme, 21 lakh farmers selected in Uttar Pradesh have been found ineligible in a probe, State Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi said on September 7.
The amount given to those ineligible farmers so far under the scheme will be recovered from them, the minister added.
A total of 2.85 crore farmers were selected under the Centre's Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme in the State, out of which 21 lakh beneficiaries have been found ineligible, Mr. Shahi told reporters.
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There are many such cases in which both husband and wife are getting the benefit of this scheme, he said, adding those found ineligible included many who used to file income tax.
The minister said that the amount will be recovered from the ineligible farmers.
About the verification, Mr. Shahi said that it was a routine process, and complaints, if any, are also looked into during the process.
Those found ineligible included many who used to file income tax, he noted.
PM Kisan Samman Nidhi is a Central scheme with 100% funding from the Government of India. Under the scheme, income support of ₹6,000 per year in three equal instalments is provided to all land-holding farmer families.
The fund is directly transferred to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.
On February 24, 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the scheme in Uttar Pradesh's Gorakhpur by transferring the first instalment of ₹2,000 each to over one crore farmers.
The scheme was frequently referred to by the BJP leaders during the recent Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election.
The Uttar Pradesh Agriculture Minister informed that the 12th instalment of the Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme will be released by the end of this month, and only those farmers whose land records and on-site verification work is uploaded on the PM-Kisan portal will be given the benefit of the plan.
Additional Chief Secretary, Agriculture, Devesh Chaturvedi said the process of uploading data on the Kisan Portal is being done on a war footing and the 12th instalment of Kisan Samman Nidhi will be given to all eligible farmers.
The Agriculture Minister said that till now, the work of loading the land records of 1.51 crore farmers has been done on the portal.
He appealed to the farmers to get their data uploaded to the portal as soon as possible.
