Dead, ineligible among beneficiaries of PM-KISAN scheme in Nagaland: CAG

The audit covering the period from December 2018 to March 2021 said an amount of Rs.2.36 crore was paid to 2053 ineligible beneficiaries

The implementation of the central sector scheme Pradhan Mantri-Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) in Nagaland is fraught with shortcomings even though the target was achieved by the state government, says a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

Representational image (PTI)

The CAG report on social, general and revenue sectors for the year ended March 31, 2022 which was tabled in the recently concluded monsoon session of the state assembly on Thursday revealed that a large amount of money was paid to over 2000 ineligible beneficiaries while genuine applicants were rejected over reasons such as incorrect entries of unique biometric identity and bank account numbers.

The performance audit, covering the period from December 2018 to March 2021 reported that an amount of Rs.2.36 crore was paid to 2053 ineligible beneficiaries including 662 in-service and 82 retired government employees.

The CAG also detected instances of payment to deceased beneficiaries. On examining management information system (MIS) reports, it said there were 108 inactive beneficiaries, who had died. Of them 86 deaths were recorded while the information about the rest were unavailable. Delay in uploading deaths in the database resulted in instalments being credited even after the death of beneficiaries and transfer of scheme benefits to ineligible beneficiaries, the audit report said.

“Further analysis revealed that 132 instalments of Rs.2.64 lakh were credited to bank accounts of 43 beneficiaries even after their deaths,” it noted.

The CAG also pointed out that beneficiary lists were prepared without any checks in the system and ownership of cultivable land belonging to beneficiaries were not verified by concerned administrative officers but countersigned by the deputy commissioners.

“The beneficiaries were not correlated with the Nagaland’s Agriculture Census 2015-16 as the names of operational holders/farmers were not available on records. No landholding records were maintained at the village level and documents to cross verify the land-ownership of PM-KISAN beneficiaries was also not available with the government,” the report stated.

It noted that no action was taken by the department to recover and refund the amount as per operational guidelines while inaccurate data entries resulted in rejection of records during validation and deprived genuine farmers from availing scheme benefits.

The CAG report noted that a lack of social audit and non-participation of other stakeholders in the scheme impacted timely detection and rectification of incorrect records.

It recommended that the state government should conduct state-wide verification of beneficiaries by involving banks and village councils to weed out ineligible beneficiaries while underscoring the need to take steps to recover the amounts unduly credited to accounts of such beneficiaries .

The CAG further recommended that the state government strengthen the grievance redressal mechanism to ensure resolution of complaints as per procedure and social audit be conducted periodically to ensure transparency.

As per the state’s Agriculture Census 2015-16, there are 1,95,874 individual operational holdings with an area of 9,53,460 hectares while the scheme registered a total 2,13,551 farmers. The CAG pointed out that the cultivable area as per the Census could be compared with PM-KISAN as beneficiaries farm sizes were not uploaded on the scheme portal.