Congress Slams Govt For ‘Taking Back’ Money From Farmers

The Congress on Thursday claimed that the Centre is issuing notices to farmers deemed ineligible under the PM-Kisan scheme to take back the money disbursed to them, and demanded the recovery from “poor annadaatas” be immediately stopped.

The opposition party said while the government is “waiving lakhs of crores” worth of loans of its industrialist friends, it is taking back money from farmers.

Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters in New Delhi, Congress spokesperson Akhilesh Pratap Singh said that by declaring the farmers ineligible under the Kisan Samman Nidhi, the central government has started the action of taking back the money.

“Instead of Kisan Samman Nidhi, this move of the central government has become ‘Kisan Apman Nidhi’. The government, which is waiving lakhs of crores of loans of its industrialist friends, is taking back the money given to the poor ‘annadaatas’ of the country,” Singh said.

In 2019, when the Modi government started the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi before the Lok Sabha election, it “hastily” took bank account numbers of farmers so that money reached them before the polls, he alleged.

“Now the central government is saying that those who are not eligible for this and have received the amount under the scheme should return the money. The government is also sending notices to farmers for taking back the money. The process of recovery by declaring about two crore farmers ineligible across the country should be immediately stopped,” Singh said.

The government has said that money has been transferred to ineligible beneficiaries under the PM-Kisan scheme and an advisory has been issued to states for getting refunds. A facility has been created on the web-portal through which any individual farmer can return the money through Non-Tax Receipt Portal system.

The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana, which was announced in February 2019, is a central scheme that aims at providing financial assistance to landholding farmer families, subject to certain exclusion criteria, to enable them to take care of expenses related to agriculture and allied activities as well as domestic needs.

The Congress leader alleged that before the 2022 assembly election, the Uttar Pradesh government had started the scheme of free food grains to eligible cardholders to influence their votes, which has now been stopped. “With (the) objective now achieved, vote taken, free ration has also been stopped,” he said. “The closure of the free ration scheme at such a time exposes the politics of selfishness and meanness of the state government,” he added. (PTI)