Govt may raise PM-Kisan allocation to ₹1 lakh crore, to disburse ₹1,500/year more to each farmer
After the completion of five years and ahead of the next General Elections scheduled in April-May 2024, the government is likely to raise the amount of money transferred under its flagship direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme PM-Kisan to ₹7,500 per year from the current ₹6,000. The revised instalment may be transferred before the Holi festival starting from the December-March 2023-24 fiscal year after an announcement in the Budget.
“The government may increase the Budget allocation to ₹1,00,000 crore under PM-Kisan from the current ₹60,000 crore, even though the actual expenditure is likely to go up by a quarter,” an official source said. The actual expenditure was ₹66,825.11 crore in 2021-22.
There were two options before the government — the first was to keep the instalment amount the same at ₹2,000 and raise the number of instalments from 3 to 4 by increasing the total amount from ₹6,000/year to ₹8,000. The second option was to increase the instalment amount from ₹2,000 to ₹2,500 and retain the total number of instalments at three per year, sources said.
The government has been, for a long time, assessing the PM-Kisan scheme, and it found that there is a drop in the number of beneficiaries to about eight crore after exclusion criteria were implemented, whereas initially, the idea was to cover 11-12 crore farmers annually. So, whatever savings have been achieved with lower coverage will be passed on to the beneficiaries, the sources said.
The PM-Kisan scheme was launched in February 2019, before the announcement of the General Election, and the first disbursal was made for the December-March period of the 2018-19 fiscal.