Deferring Aadhaar Linking For Income Support Scheme To Benefit 4 Crore Farmers

The government’s decision to extend the deadline for farmers to link their Aadhaar to avail income support will benefit about four crore farmers, a government official said requesting anonymity.

The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, today relaxed the mandatory requirement of Aadhaar seeding of beneficiaries under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme. The new deadline for the same will now be November 30, 2019, according to a statement by the Press Information Bureau.

Under the PM-KISAN scheme, farmers receive cash support of Rs 6,000 a year in three instalments of Rs 2,000 each. The income support scheme required farmers who have received the first two instalments of Rs 2,000 each to seed their Aadhaar by Aug. 1, 2019 to be eligible for the third instalment. First instalment was for the period December 2018-March 2019, and second during April-July 2019.

For those farmers who received their first cash support in April-June due to delay in registrations could only receive the second instalment after seeding their Aadhaar by Aug 1. Those farmers eligible to receive first instalment after Aug. 1, had to mandatorily seed their Aadhaar.

It was not possible to get 100 percent Aadhaar seeding for release of funds as per the prescribed time schedule for releasing funds, the government said.

“Since the farmers are still gearing up for Rabi season, they are in dire need of money to take care of various farming activities like procurement of seeds, preparation of soil and other associated activities like irrigation, maintenance and mobilisation of machinery and tools,” the government said. Non-seeding of beneficiaries’ details with Aadhaar number will delay the release of further instalments and will cause discontentment among the farmers, it added.

Currently, out of eight and half crore eligible farmers, about 53 percent or four and half crore farmers have seeded their Aadhaar with the government’s beneficiary database, the official quoted earlier said.

However, all these four and half crore farmers will get their second and third instalments depending on when they received their first one. The scheme disburses cash support to farmers once in four months.

There were about four crore farmers who had received the first instalment on time, and would be eligible for the third one now, the official said. But, only 1.74 crore farmers, who have seeded their Aadhaar, have received the third payment so far, he said.

These farmers will now receive their third instalment as the Aadhaar seeding deadline has been extended, the official said. About 5.14 crore farmers have received the second instalment under the scheme, and 6.76 crore farmers have received their first one, according to government data. Eligible farmers who could not receive their second and third instalments for not sharing Aadhar data would get so before the festive season, the official said.