Agri minister distributes awards to top-performing states, districts under the PM-KISAN scheme

Maharashtra awarded for good performance in physical verification, grievance redressal & Uttar Pradesh awarded for fastest take-off of scheme

NEW DELHI, 25 February 2021: India minister for agriculture and farmers welfare, 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 recently.

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, Tomar said as on 24-02-2021, benefits amounting to INR 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.

Tomar thanked Prime Minister 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.

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. 

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.

During the event, the following categories of awards were given:

Awards to States/ UTs

Parameter	Category	State	Explanation
Highest percent of Aadhar authenticated beneficiaries	Other States	Karnataka	97 percent Aadhar authenticated data. More than 90 percent beneficiaries in Karnataka are being paid benefits via Aadhar based payment mode.
Good Performance in Physical verification and Grievance Redressal		Maharashtra	Physical Verification Completed – 99 percent Grievance Redressal – 60 percent
Fastest Take off		Uttar Pradesh	Nearly 1.53 crore farmers were registered during the period of Dec’18 to Mar’19
Highest percent of Aadhar authenticated beneficiaries	NE States & Hilly Terrain	Arunachal Pradesh	Aadhar Authentication is 98 percent
Good Performance in Physical verification and Grievance Redressal		Himachal Pradesh	Himachal Pradesh Physical Verification Completed – 75 percent Grievance Redressal – 56 percent

Awards to Districts

Parameter	Category	District
Aadhar Authenticated and Farmers Paid (Weighted Average)	Other States	Rupnagar (Punjab) Kurukshetra (Haryana) Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh)
	North East/Hilly Areas	Lahaul&Spiti (Himachal Pradesh) Udham Singh Nagar (Uttarakhand)
Grievance Redressal	Other States	Pune (Maharashtra) Dohad (Gujarat) SPSR Nellore (Andhra Pradesh)
	North East/Hilly Areas	Nainital (Uttarakhand) Sirmaur (Himachal Pradesh)
Physical Verification	Other States	Ahmednagar (Maharashtra) Anantapur (Andhra Pradesh) Aurangabad (Bihar)
	North East/Hilly Areas	Kangra (Himachal Pradesh) Dehradun (Uttarakhand)

 

About  Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Scheme

The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) Scheme was launched on 24 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 December 2018, aims to provide a payment of INR 6000 per year for the farmers’ families with cultivable land holding up to 2 hectares, subject to certain exclusions.  The financial benefit of INR 6000 is being released by the Central Government in three 4-monthly instalments of INR 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 1 February 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 1 April 2019.