Unspent Money Allocated for PM Kisan Yojana Could Be Diverted to MGNREGA, Says Report

PM-Kisan

A report in Business Standard says that some portion of the money, which is likely to remain unspent under the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana could be diverted for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, also known as MGNREGA.

It is expected that some of the Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000 crore, which may remain unspent under PM Kisan scheme could now be spent under the MGNREGA that  presently has an allocation of Rs 60,000 crore for the financial year 2019-20. However, around Rs 48,000 crore has already been spent.

Also last week, The Wire had reported that about 30 percent of the money allocated for PM Kisan are expected to go unspent. An allocation of Rs 75,000 crore had been made for 2019-20, but as on 25th October, only Rs 26,000 crore was used.

Vivek Aggarwal, CEO of PM-Kisan scheme said that not more than Rs 50,000 crore is expected to be spent till the end of 2019-20.

According to the ministry, the reason is that in the starting they had overestimated or wrongly calculated the number of farmers in India. But, as The Wire had explained, it will be more precise to say that the agriculture ministry did not & still does not know as to how many farmers are actually there in the country.

It was also observed that another main reason for not being able to spend the whole allocation amount is that the ministry had decided not to make retrospective payments. This means if a farmer was registered in the third phase, he would not get the instalments due in first & second phases.

Although 7.17 crore farmers have enrolled for PM Kisan, only 4.12 crore farmers, those who had registered in the 1st phase, will be eligible to get all 4 instalments that will be due by the end of March 2020.