india

Updated: Nov 09, 2019 09:05 IST

Months after the BJD government in Odisha disbursed the first instalment of Rs 5000 to about 510,000 farmers under a financial assistance scheme for small and marginal farmers as well as sharecroppers, it has cut the list of beneficiaries to half.

The Krushak Assistant for Livelihood and Income Augmentation (KALIA) was created by the Odisha government in January this year to help such farmers ride out farm distress.

Its first instalment helped landless farmers purchase seeds, fertilisers, pesticides and cover the cost of labour per agriculture season. A Kalia beneficiary is entitled to get Rs 10,000 per year for two crops (kharif and rabi).

The scheme proved to be a game-changer in the assembly polls and by curbing anti-incumbency in rural Odisha, KALIA helped Naveen Patnaik become the chief minister for the fifth consecutive time.

In July this year, the state government undertook a verification of the list of beneficiaries, after members cutting across party lines alleged that a number of ineligible people had availed benefits under the scheme.

The state government through advertisements in newspapers asked ineligible beneficiaries to self-declare and refund the first instalment.

Several families which had more than one beneficiary under KALIA were identified, even though the scheme envisages only one person per family as eligible to receive its benefits.

Others identified as ineligible included large farmers, minor children, government employees and pensioners. Apart from the large-scale duplication of the number of beneficiaries, there was also a mismatch of Aadhaar numbers and names.

An agriculture department official said the government sanitised the data and found 25.90 lakh beneficiaries eligible for getting the second instalment of Rs 5000.

Of the 25.90 lakh eligible beneficiaries, 18.16 lakh are small and marginal farmers while 7.74 lakh are landless agricultural households.

However, the state agriculture secretary, Sourabh Garg, said the numbers will go up as more and more are being verified.

“We will be able to give the exact number of beneficiaries next month,” he said.

Opposition leaders accused the government of implementing the scheme hastily, merely in order to win the elections.

“Many of the beneficiaries were close to the ruling party, and after the polls, the government is trying to cut the expenditure as it now finds the scheme a burden,” alleged senior Congress leader Suresh Routray.

The government estimates that an amount of Rs 8122.60 crore will be needed for the KALIA scheme in 2019-20 and 2020-21.

Meanwhile, the World Bank offered to design the impact evaluation of the scheme without any financial burden on the state exchequer. Omidyar Network will sign an MoU with the agriculture department for documenting the scheme through short videos and films.

From 2020-21 onwards, the state government will additionally implement the PM-Kisan scheme under which small and marginal farmers will get Rs 6000 a year.