Over 1 lakh farmers voluntarily gave up their PM-Kisan benefits

Pradhan Mantri Kisan SAmman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) is a Central Sector Scheme with 100% funding from Government of India.
Aim : To augment the income of the farmers by providing income support to all landholding farmers’ families across the country.
Launched in 2019, the Scheme initially provided income support to all Small and Marginal Farmers’ families across the country, holding cultivable land upto 2 hectares. Its ambit was later expanded to cover all farmer families in the country irrespective of the size of their land holdings.
Under the Scheme an amount of Rs. 6000/- per year is transferred in three 4-monthly installments of Rs. 2000/- directly into the bank accounts of the farmers, subject to certain exclusion criteria relating to higher income status.
Excluded from the scheme
- Institutional land holders,
- Farmer families holding constitutional posts,
- Serving or retired officers and employees of state/central government as well as PSUs and government autonomous bodies.
- Professionals like doctors, engineers and lawyers as well as retired pensioners with a monthly pension of over Rs 10,000 and those who paid income tax in the last assessment year.
Identification of beneficiaries: The responsibility of identifying the eligible beneficiary farmers and uploading their data on the PM-KISAN portal lies entirely with the state governments.

Why in News?

Around 1.16 lakh farmers have voluntarily given up the benefits of the annual Rs 6,000 Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) scheme across the country from June 2023 to May 2024.
The Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare had introduced a module in the PM-Kisan mobile app and website last year which enables farmers to voluntarily exit the scheme.

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