NEW DELHI: Even as late entrants among the Congress-ruled states such as Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan have recently stepped up efforts of sharing list of beneficiaries with the Centre under PM-Kisan, the TMC-ruled West Bengal continued to deny over 72 lakh of his farmers the benefit of the ‘assured income support’ as on Wednesday despite repeated reminders sent to the state government for joining this fully centrally funded scheme.

Both Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had come on board last month, but these states were not as proactive as the other Congress-ruled state Punjab which incidentally figured among the top six states in the country which could bring benefits to more than 50% of their potential beneficiaries.

The other states at the top are NDA-ruled ones like Haryana,

, Himachal Pradesh,

and

. Remaining NDA-ruled states are, however, not as proactive as these five.

,

and

are among such states which could not reach the benefits to even 25% of their farmers.

Though Delhi,

and Lakshwadeep to have, so far, not come on board, a number of farmers in these state/UTs are much less as compared to West Bengal. These three have collectively nearly one lakh of landholding farmers while West Bengal alone has 72 lakh of potential beneficiaries out of total 14.5 crore such farmers in the country.

After expanding the ambit of the scheme for all landholding farmers, irrespective of their land size, the Union agriculture secretary Sanjay Agarwal sent fresh reminders to all states on June 7, asking them to share a list of beneficiaries by July 31 so that they could avail benefit during 2019-20 financial year.

Acting on the Centre’s latest missive, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan governments have now decided to speed up their verification exercise so that they could meet the Centre’s deadline of July 31. So far, only 9,304 farmers of Madhya Pradesh could get the first instalment of Rs 2,000 each under the scheme whereas the figures for Rajasthan stand at 13.75 lakh.

Under the PM-Kisan, all landholding farmers in the country, subject to certain exclusions, are entitled to receive Rs 6,000 each in three equal instalments per annum provided the states and UTs share verified list of beneficiaries with the agriculture ministry.

Latest data, however, shows that only little over one-fourth of the potential beneficiaries among total 12.29 crore marginal and small farmers (having landholding up to 2 hectares) in the country could get the first instalment of it (Rs 2,000 each) as on June 18.

“Other categories of farmers - semi-medium, medium and large - will start getting the benefits only after the states share their updated list,” said an official.