New Delhi: Some portion of the money that is likely to remain unspent under PM Kisan could be diverted for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), according to a report in Business Standard.
It is now likely that some of the Rs 20,000-Rs 25,000 crore that is expected to remain unspent under PM Kisan could be spent under MGNREGA which currently has an allocation of Rs 60,000 crore for the 2019-20 financial year and almost Rs 48,000 crore has already been spent.
The Wire had reported last week in a series of two reports that about 30% of the funds allocated for PM Kisan are likely to go unspent. An allocation of Rs 75,000 crore had been made for the 2019-20 financial year, but as on October 25, only Rs 26,000 crore had been spent.
The CEO of the scheme, Vivek Aggarwal, had told The Wire that not more than Rs 50,000 crore is likely to be spent till the end of the 2019-20 financial year.
Also read: Exclusive: Why Millions of Farmers Won’t Receive at Least One Instalment of PM Kisan
The reason, according to the ministry, is that in the beginning they had overestimated the number of farmers in the country. However, as The Wire had explained, it would be more accurate to say that the ministry did not – and still does not – know how many farmers there are in India.
We also found that another major reason for being unable to spend the entire allocation is that the ministry has decided to not make retrospective payments. This has meant that if a farmer was registered in the third period, they would not receive the instalments due in the first and second periods.
Exclusive: 30% of PM Kisan Funding to Go Unspent as Centre Doesn’t Know How Many Farmers India Has
So, while 7.17 crore farmers have been registered under PM Kisan, only 4.12 crore – those who registered in the first period – will be eligible to receive all the four instalments that will be due by the end of March 2020.
One of the factors that has led to the slow rate of registration of farmers is that states have delayed providing data for farmers or not provided data at all like in the case of West Bengal.