New Delhi: On April 3, 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that if the BJP comes to power in West Bengal, the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi benefits will be passed in the first cabinet meeting.
The BJP lost the polls but nevertheless, the stage is now set for 7.50 lakh farmers to get the first installment of Rs 2000 each in their respective bank accounts.
Necessary paper works have been cleared starting from formal nod from the West Bengal government and State Bank of India has been instructed to to auto debit the money from the scheme’s nodal account.
Money will be credited to the beneficiaries’ accounts, sources said. Union Agriculture ministry sources said, West Bengal has about 70 lakh farmers and out of these 41.5 lakh had registered on PM-Kisan portal as mandated. But they were deprived of the benefits since 2018 as the Mamata government did not give its green signal to the scheme.
The state government was against the ‘automatic bank account payment’, a source said.
The first installment would reach the bank accounts by May 14-15.
Altogether over 13 lakh farmers have been “verified” by the government of India and for others verification process is on.
In his election rallies at Haripal in Hooghly district and other places, the Prime Minister also had assured that the farmers in West Bengal will start getting the benefits of the Central scheme instantly; and also they will also receive the backlog of Rs 18,000 in last three years.
“I will request you to kindly advise the concerned ministry to release the fund,” Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said in one letter to the Prime Minister after swearing in on May 5.
For his part, Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar had also written to Mamata Banerjee lamenting the delay of three years.
“If the state government had decided to join the scheme from the beginning, then till now, about Rs 9,660 crore would have been transferred to the accounts of these farmer families,” Tomar said in his letter.
The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana or PM Kisan Samman is a government scheme that gives Rs 6,000 annual subsidy to the registered beneficiary farmers in three installments of Rs 2,000 each.
All small and marginal farmers are to get up to Rs 6,000 per year as minimum income support.
Since its inception in December 2018, the government has given seven installments to these farmers up to April 2021.
The Modi government’s Rs 75,000-crore scheme aims to cover 125 million farmers, irrespective of the size of their landholding in the country.
