ONGOLE: More than 10,000 people have been found ineligible to get financial assistance under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme in Prakasam district. The Centre had launched the PM-KISAN scheme to aid small and marginal farmers, under which beneficiaries get Rs 6,000 per year in installments. The amount is directly credited to the beneficiaries’ bank accounts after collecting their details from the State agriculture department.
Following a directive from the Centre, the agriculture department is preparing a list of ineligible beneficiaries to weed them out of the scheme and recover the money paid to them for the last two years.
As many as 10,560 ineligible beneficiaries of the scheme have been identified so far. Of the total, 1,407 do not have agriculture land and they had obtained Rs 1.75 crore. As many as 9,153 income tax payers and government employees are also found to be enjoying the benefit illegally and the total amount paid to them is put at Rs 4,43 crore under the scheme.
“We are going to open a bank account in the name of the district nodal officer to deposit the money recovered from the ineligible beneficiaries. Mandal officials will serve notices on ineligible PM-KISAN beneficiaries soon to recover the total amount of Rs 6.19 crore,’’ S Srinivasa Rao, incharge joint director of agriculture, told TNIE.