PM releases ₹21k crore to 100 million farmers
NEW DELHI/SHIMLA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday virtually released the 11th installment of the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi, the cash-transfer scheme for farmers, paying out ₹21,000 crore to nearly 100 million cultivators, at an event in Shimla organised to mark eight years of his government at the Centre.
Addressing the Garib Kalyan Sammelan at Ridge Maidan in the Himachal capital, the PM said his government stood for “welfare for all”.
“These eight years have been years of devotion to welfare of the people and good governance,” the PM said while interacting with beneficiaries of 16 centrally sponsored schemes conducted by nine central ministries.
PM-KISAN is a central government scheme which provides enrolled farmers with annual income transfers of ₹6,000 in three equal instalments. The funds are deposited directly to the beneficiaries’ bank accounts. The last instalment was paid on January 1. The total payout so far has been to the tune ₹1.82 lakh crore.
Headlines about nepotism in governance, loot and corruption dominated the news before the Bharatiya Janata Party-led NDA came to power in 2014, the PM said at the event. “Before 2014, the government considered corruption an integral part of the system. Instead of fighting the practice, the government succumbed to it as the money of the schemes would vanish before reaching the needy,” said Modi.
After coming to power, the BJP government pruned 90 million fake names from the list of beneficiaries of various schemes. “Be it Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana or scholarship or any other scheme, we have eradicated the scope of corruption through direct transfer of benefits. We have transferred over ₹22 lakh crore to the bank accounts of beneficiaries of various schemes through direct benefit transfer,” the PM said. Now the government is not the master, but the servant of the masses, the PM said.
The BJP government is working to build a new India, he said. “We are trying to give a permanent solution to the problems which earlier were considered permanent.” Before 2014, the national security was a major concern, he said. “Now our borders are more secure than they were before 2014,” the PM said.
The PM said nearly 2 billion vaccines against the coronavirus have been administered in the country so far.
KARNAL: Upset over the ink attack at farm leader Rakesh Tikait in Bengaluru on Monday, members of farm unions held a protest in Karnal on Tuesday.
The protesting farmers raised slogans against the BJP government and claimed that the attack on Tikait was in connivance with the BJP-led Karnataka government.
They handed over a memorandum, addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar, to the district authorities and demanded that the Karnataka government should take strict action against the culprits.
The farmers said the ink was not thrown at Tikait but the entire farming community. “Such attack in a BJPruled state proves that it is an anti-farmer government,” they said.