The Centre has allocated only Rs 60,000 crore to its flagship PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana for the financial year 2023-24, shows the Union Budget document on expenditure. This is the lowest Budget allocation for the scheme in past five years. In fact, the Budgetary Allocation for the scheme reached at the highest level during 2019-20 and 2020-21 and has since come down amid a drop in the number of registered farmers.
This comes at a time when farmers in the country are eagerly waiting for the 13th installment of the PM Kisan scheme, which has been due since December 1, 2022.
The Centre has so far released 12 installments under this direct benefits transfer scheme under which Rs 6,000 are given to eligible farmers in the country in 3 equal installments.
While there were speculations about the subsidy amount under the scheme to be increased to Rs 8,000, finance minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman only once mentioned the scheme during her Budget Speech. “The government made cash transfer of Rs 2.2 lakh crore (since the inception of the scheme in 2019) under the PM Kisan scheme,” the FM said while presenting the Union Budget 2023-24 on February 1, 2023.
Touted to be one of the largest DBT Schemes in the world, the Pm Kisan scheme covered about 11.3 crore farmers in its April-July 2022-23 payment cycle, says the government’s Economic Survey, presented on January 31, 2023. About 3 lakh women farmers have benefited from the PM-Kisan scheme under which Rs 54,000 crore has been transferred to them so far, President Droupadi Murmu said on January 31, 2023.
