GUWAHATI: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) recently uncovered a scam amounting to ₹567 crore under the PM-KISAN scheme, with Barpeta emerging as its epicentre for involving ineligible recipients.
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The report states that a large share of the misappropriated funds was wrongfully disbursed to recipients from the district who did not qualify for the scheme. A verification exercise conducted between May and July 2020, sparked by public complaints, identified 11,72,685 ineligible beneficiaries in Barpeta, representing 37% of the district’s registrants.
Statewide, the audit found that 72.54% of ineligible beneficiaries, totaling 11,31,152 individuals, were untraceable, indicating the presence of widespread fake entries.
However, the audit findings also show that almost a quarter of the applications submitted for the scheme were flagged as ineligible by the PM-KISAN portal and the Public Financial Management System (PFMS).
Between December 2018 and March 2021, Assam had registered 41,87,023 applications, with 10,66,593 (25%) applications marked as ineligible initially. Additional investigations revealed a further 15,59,286 fraudulent entries, bringing the total number of ineligible applications to over 15.5 lakh.
Efforts to recover the misallocated funds have been inadequate, with only 0.24% reclaimed so far.
