Govt asks Assam to probe PM-KISAN fraud charges

The Union agriculture ministry has requested the Assam authorities for a report and a probe into a possible fraud in PM-KISAN, the federal cash-transfer programme for farmers, which allowed non-farmers to get money within the state as authorities halted additional funds, an official mentioned, requesting anonymity.

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal has ordered investigations below the watch of a prime state bureaucrat, who will give his report in a month, the chief minister’s workplace mentioned in an announcement on Monday.

The Centre is prone to advise a class of states with extra relaxed enrolment norms to wash up beneficiary lists, the official added.

“The responsibility of identification of beneficiary rests with the states,” this particular person mentioned. “It is for the state to then initiate criminal proceedings and recover the money.”

The risk of ineligible folks posing as farmers and enrolling within the scheme heightened after a software program that manages the programme discovered sampling errors of land data not including up, in keeping with a second official acquainted with the matter.

Field officers in Assam are scrambling to vet beneficiaries. “We have been able to identify 9,000 ineligible beneficiaries in our district,” Prabin Saikia, an agriculture division official scrutinising data in northern Assam’s Lakhimpur, a tea-growing district, mentioned.

There has been communication between the Centre and the state on the problem, the primary official mentioned.

In Guwahati, Pushpadhar Das, a farm knowledgeable, mentioned it appeared that individuals who bought counted in “include pensioners, non-farmers, income-tax payers” and that “names of more than one person from each family” are on the listing.

Under PM-KISAN, the federal government gives revenue help of Rs 6000 a yr to farmers with a legitimate enrolment, paid in three equal money transfers of Rs 2000 — one each 4 months. It was launched on 24 February 2019, when the primary instalment was paid. In the final tranche, paid in April amid the lockdown, practically 70.7 million farmers got Rs 16000 crore below the programme.

Cash help below PM-KISAN is given to “a farmer family comprising husband, wife and minor children who own cultivable land as per land records,” in keeping with the programme’s handbook.

In all states, barring the Northeast and Jharkhand, farmers want to supply 4 units of paperwork to be eligible for money: up to date land data, the 12-digit biometric Aadhaar, telephone quantity with know-your-customer-proof and financial institution particulars.

These are then transformed into information and “triangulated” (or cross-linked and verified) by a software program, referred to as the general public monetary administration system (PFMS), that permits automated switch of money into financial institution accounts. The PMFS, the spine of direct profit transfers, is designed to reject any declare if the “triangulation” doesn’t match.

Not the entire above-cited paperwork nonetheless are necessary for northeastern states, the place Aadhaar penetration is beneath 6%, in keeping with the Union authorities’s Report on Doubling Farmers’ Income.

“In some of the northeastern states, land ownership rights are community based and it might not be possible to assess the quantum of land-holder farmers,” the second federal official mentioned. This may have allowed the breach, he mentioned.

“Human errors have occurred where data-entry operators failed to match names of beneficiaries and their villages correctly, but most others were intentional inclusion of names of ineligible persons,” Das mentioned in Guwahati.

Scamsters gained benefit of a hurried roll-out of the scheme in 2019 and relaxed norms, Das added. “Unintentional errors as well as falsification of records took place. Some say there was a competition among officials on who could enter more names.”

The Assam authorities had already ordered re-verification of beneficiaries earlier than a probe was introduced. The deadline for it’s mid-June.

“These things are bound to be caught eventually because as and when records are updated, the software is designed to do its job of spotting fraud and rejecting claims. The largest rejections have happened in Uttar Pradesh,” mentioned KS Mani of the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.

Mani cautioned that northeast may see issues in future too as a result of the PFMS is an Aadhaar-based platform and disbursal for northeast and Jharkhand is made by the PFMS with out the authenticity-ascertaining technique of triangulation.