NEW DELHI: The Centre’s flagship ‘income support’ scheme (PM-Kisan) will on Monday complete one year of its launch, but West Bengal continues to deny over 72 lakh of its farmers the benefits of the Scheme.Though the West Bengal government provides ‘income support’ to its farmers under its own similar scheme, it has denied this additional benefits under PM-Kisan to them which resulted in loss of over Rs 4,320 crore to the state’s farmers till February 20.In fact, West Bengal is the only state which has, so far, not joined the scheme despite several reminders from the Centre. Other non-NDA ruled states states/UT such as Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi too had initially shown reluctance in joining PM-Kisan, but later they had come on board by sending verified details of their eligible farmers to the Union agriculture ministry by May-June last year.Over 8.46 crore out of about 14 crore farmers from across the country have been benefited under the Scheme till last Thursday. The Centre has released more than Rs 50,850 crore to these farmers till now.Under the Scheme an amount of Rs 6000 per year is transferred in three four-monthly installments of Rs 2000 each directly into the bank accounts of the farmers, subject to certain exclusion criteria relating to higher income status. The scheme, however, doesn’t include landless/tenant farmers in the list of beneficiaries.Updated data, released by the agriculture ministry ahead of its launch anniversary, shows Uttar Pradesh at the top in terms of having highest number of farmers (1.87 crore) received money under PM-Kisan whereas Gujarat figured at the top in percentage term where 90% of its total landholding farmers received one or more installments of the benefits.“Transfer of money directly into farmers’ bank accounts by the Centre depends on how quickly the states send verified list of eligible farmers to the ministry. We expect the number of beneficiaries to cross 10 crore by end of this financial year,” said an official.Other high performing states under PM-Kisan include Haryana, Uttarakhand, Odisha, Rajashthan Maharashtra , Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh where more than 50% of the landholding farmers received money as on date.In absolute number, Maharshtra (84 lakh farmers), Madhya Pradesh (55 lakh), Bihar (53 lakh) and Rajasthan (52 lakh) figured at second, third, fourth and fifth spot, respectively, in the list with UP being at the top.Idea behind launching of this scheme was to augment income of landholding farmers’ families by providing income support and enable them to take care of expenses related to agriculture and allied activities as well as domestic needs.On the occasion of its anniversary, Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar will on Monday launch an exclusive mobile App for PM-Kisan which will have a provision for self registration of farmers by facilitating entry and editing of names as per their Aadhaar numbers.With the help of the App, farmers can even ascertain status of payment of their instalments by quoting their Aadhaar number or bank account number or the registered mobile number.