Families of farmers who have one or more members paying taxes or are a Government employee (both state and centre), pensioners drawing monthly emolument of Rs 10,000 or more, income tax payers will be ineligible for benefit under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) yojana.
Families who have professionals such as doctors, engineers, lawyers, chartered accountants or architects will be left out too. As per guidelines issued by the agriculture ministry, states have been given a deadline of February 25 to submit lists of eligible farmers. Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh has written to the Chief Ministers of all States for their support in the effective and speedy implementation of PM-KISAN so that the entitled benefits are expeditiously transferred to the farmers.
A small or marginal farmer family is defined as “a family comprising husband, wife, and minor children, who collectively own cultivable land up to 2 hectare according to the land records of the state or Union Territory”.
The ministry’s guidelines say the exclusion list also includes all institutional land holders and farmer families in which one or more of its members belong to following categories: former and present holders of constitutional posts, former and present ministers/state ministers and former/present members of Lok Sabha/ Rajya Sabha/State Legislative Assemblies/State Legislative Councils, former and present mayors of municipal corporations and former and present chairpersons of district panchayats.
All persons who paid income tax in the previous assessment year are excluded. However, the multi-tasking staff, Class IV/Group D employees in the government sector would be eligible for PM-KISAN.
An alternative mechanism will be set up for the northeast, where land ownership is often community based, making it difficult to select eligible famers. The mechanism for eligibility of northeast farmers will be developed and approved by a committee of Union ministers from the Ministry of Development of North East Region (DoNER), Ministry of Land Resources, Agriculture Minister and the state chief ministers or their ministerial representative, based on the proposal by the northeast states concerned. The Centre has asked the states to identify and designate a sponsoring bank for this scheme.
Announced in the Interim Budget, the scheme is supposed to provide an additional Rs 6,000 per annum income support to 12 crore small and marginal farmers. The first instalment of Rs 2,000/farmer would directly be credited to bank accounts by March 31.
Land owned by temples or other institutions won’t form part of the scheme. The guidelines also state if the spouse of a farmer falls within the exclusion criteria, he won’t be considered eligible for the benefit. The guidelines also state that cases, where transfer of ownership of cultivable land has happened due to any reason - purchase, succession, will, gift, etc — between December 1, 2018, and January 31, 2019, shall be eligible for benefits under the scheme.