GUWAHATI: The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has criticized the Assam government for providing funds amounting to crores of rupees to ineligible farmers under the PM Kishan Scheme.
The CAG said that the state government committed the irregularities while selecting the beneficiaries in haste, without identifying land-holding farmers.
The CAG said that the responsibility of identifying the landholding farming families eligible for the benefits of PM Kishan is vested with the state governments.
A performance audit on the scheme has revealed that the state government did not maintain a database of land-holding farming families to identify potential beneficiaries.
Emphasis was given to uploading a large number of beneficiary data within a short period of time, instead of ensuring eligibility of the beneficiaries as per the provision of the guidelines. Lack of monitoring by supervisory officers also adversely affected the implementation of the scheme. As a result, there were flaws in data entry, causing rejection of a large number of data by PM Kishan Portal.
PM Kishan Scheme was launched in 2019. Under this scheme, a farmer gets Rs 6,000 yearly in three equal installments. After the detection of huge anomalies in the scheme, the state government ordered for an inquiry carried out by a commission headed by the then Additional Chief Secretary Jishnu Baruah.
The state government did inform the Guahati High Court that the Jishnu Baruah committee reported that 11.70 lakh ineligible farmers got benefits under PM Kishan.
An NGO moved the high court with a PIL on these irregularities. In November 2022, the high court directed the state government to take appropriate action against the officials involved in the irregularities in distribution benefits under the scheme. The court found lapses on the part of 16 district agriculture officers and 98 agriculture development officers in the irregularities.
The CAG said, “Mandatory five percent physical verification by supervisory officers was largely ineffective in the state as district agriculture officers conducted the physical verification, but no supporting documents and records were furnished. Injudicious decisions of the deputy commissioners to upload the data within a very short period of time instead of ensuring eligibility of beneficiaries under the guidelines led to uploading unverified data through unauthorized user IDs.”
The CAG recommended that the government should ensure that a database of landholding farming families is created and all eligible landholding farming families receive the benefits of the scheme.
The government should also ensure benefits released to ineligible beneficiaries are recovered and refunded to the government of India without further delay. The report said a mere 0.24 percent of funds released to ineligible beneficiaries were received back till October 2021.
Several hundred crores of rupees are yet to be recovered from the ineligible beneficiaries, and no action has been taken against a section of officers as yet.
ALSO READ: Assam: Farmers Recieve Funds Under PM-KISHAN Scheme (sentinelassam.com)
ALSO WATCH: