Year on, more than 57,000 ‘ineligible’ beneficiaries in Haryana fail to return payment

Ravinder Saini

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Rohtak, December 22

As many as 57,534 ‘ineligible’ beneficiaries across the state have not refunded the financial aid that was received under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana even one year after they were put on notices for that.

It is over 96 per cent of the total 59,702 such ‘ineligible’ beneficiaries who managed to get monetary benefit under the scheme despite being income tax payee. A total dues of Rs 76 crore is pending against them.

The scheme launched by the Centre in 2019 aims at helping small and marginal farmers by providing them a total grant of Rs 6,000 per annum in three equal instalments of Rs 2,000. Only those are entitled to get the aid, who are having land in their name in the revenue record. The beneficiary should not be income tax payee, doctor, advocate, engineer and chartered accountant. He/she should also not get a monthly pension over Rs 10,000, said an official of the Agriculture Department.

“A total 59,702 ineligible beneficiaries were detected when the Centre sent details of all beneficiaries to the Income Tax Department for verification. Then, their grant was stopped and the state government was directed to recover the amount from them. Then, the beneficiaries were served notices and asked to refund the amount at the earliest, but merely 2,168 beneficiaries (3.63 per cent) in the state have so far returned the grant of total Rs 2 crore while Rs 74 crore is still pending,” he informed.

Significantly, none of the beneficiaries in Rohtak and Palwal districts have deposited back the amount while merely two beneficiaries in Nuh, seven in Panipat, 11 in Hisar and 14 in Charkhi Dadri have refunded the monetary aid so far.