Centre Plans Campaign to Enrol 1 Crore More Farmers under Kisan Credit Card & Pension Scheme

The new government has recently sworn in with the New Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Shri Narendra Singh Tomar. He has already started implementing the beneficial schemes for farmers. Now, the regular and consequent meetings of his ministry has introduced the target of one crore Kisan Cards in first 100 days.

Union Agriculture Minister emphasized and urged all States/UTs to expedite the process of enrolment of all eligible farmer families/ beneficiaries in a time-bound manner so that the benefit under PM-KISAN for the period from April to July 2019 can be transferred directly to their bank accounts.

The implementation of three key schemes of Government of India namely, Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojna (PM-Kisan), Pension Scheme for Small and Marginal Farmers and Kisan Credit Card Campaign was also discussed.

Though the scheme is not new but implementation and the will to do the same for the benefit of the farmers is religiously new. In view of the Kisan Credit Card which was introduced in 1998, currently there are 6.92 crore live KCCs against 14.5 crore operational landholdings.

The Government is interested to implement the scheme on PAN India basis. The recent initiatives for KCC saturation include adding farmers engaged in Animal Husbandry & Fisheries, removal of inspection ledger folio charges and processing fee of loan under KCC, raising limit of collateral fee on existing agriculture loan from 1 lakh to 1.6 lakhs. DAC & FW in the first week of the February 2019 advised all Chief Secretaries/Principal Secretaries of State/UT Administration to launch KCC saturation drive, as per the criteria fixed for the beneficiary to get the benefit of the scheme.

Interestingly, during the proposed saturation drive, bank-wise or village wise campaigns will be organized to collect KCC application forms. States like Gujrat, Maharashtra, UP, Chhattisgarh, WB, Bihar, Jharkhand, HP, J&K, and NER states have already been identified where KCC penetration was found lagging. A target of 1 crore is to be achieved in the next 100 days.

The Minister interacted with the state representation in a video conferencing and stressed that there should be 100 percent enlistment of eligible beneficiaries by States/UT’s, timely uploading of corrected data on PM-Kisan portal and establishment of proper redressal Mechanism.

It is a 100 percent Central Government scheme which will give farmers Rs. 6000/- per year in 3 equal installments. From April 2019, the scheme has been extended to cover all farmers and benefit to the total beneficiaries will be 14.5 crores.

The fixed pension of Rs. 3000 is to be given to the eligible small and marginal farmers after attaining the age of 60 years. While addressing the state government representatives, the Minister further said that the PM-Kisan Yojna is an income support scheme for farmers. The Government is also funding the scheme to benefit the farmers.

By contribution of a meager amount of Rs. 100 per month, the beneficiary can opt to become member of the scheme by subscribing to a pension fund and at the age of 29 years, one can enter in the scheme. With this the Government is covering around 5 crore beneficiaries in the first three years. It will be a voluntary and contributory pension scheme with entry age of 18 to 40 year.

It is to be noted that, LIC shall be managing the pension scheme and the contribution must be made to a Pension Fund managed by the LIC. It will be responsible for the pension pay out. Under it, farmers can also opt to allow contribution to be made directly from the benefits drawn from the PM-KISAN scheme.