In the country's first and unique drive, the Goa government has tied up with India Posts to get 11,000 farmers enrolled in the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme, Deputy Chief Minister Chandrakant Kavlekar said on Friday.
"A total of 11,000 Goan farmers who could not enroll so far for PM Kisan Samman Nidhi, are being reached to their doorstep through the Postman. The local postman who we are used to seeing bringing mail to our doorstep so far will come to fill the form for the 11,000 farmers in the state who are eligible for this scheme as per the department records,"said Deputy Chief Minister of Goa Chandrakant (Babu) Kavlekar, who is also the Agriculture Minister of the state, in the press conference orgzed at Krishi Bhavan at Tonca.
"There are 38,000 Krishi cardholders in Goa, out of which 21,000 are eligible for this scheme. Last year, the Agriculture department has conducted two drives whereby 10,000 farmers out of eligible 21,000 have been enrolled for the scheme. There was a question of how to approach the remaining 11,000 farmers. With this question, we approached the India posts who reverted with a positive response and said that their postman will go door to door and get the forms filled," he added.
This is the first such exercise in India to enroll farmers in the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme, whereby the postman will be utilized to benefit farmers.
"We will make more such runs so that Farmers of Goa benefit from Agriculture schemes and they are not left behind due to lack of connectivity or any other reason. We will simplify other agriculture schemes in the coming days to that farmers are benefited outright" said Agriculture Minister on the occasion.
Post-Master General Dr Vinod Kumar said that 255 post offices spread over all the nooks and corners of Goa and over 300 employees of India Post are involved in this campaign.
"Over the past 10 days, what started as a trial run, we have been able to collect 5000 filled forms and the joint exercise is a great success from our point of view. Those farmers who do not have Savings account in Banks, the postman or local post office opens their zero balance savings account in the India Post Payments Bank just by using the Aadhaar number," he said.
Nevil Alphonso, Director of Agriculture said that the government employees, current and past elected representatives, well to do farmers are not eligible to avail benefits under this scheme.
"This PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme where the farmers directly received direct benefit transfer of Rs 2,000 in three installments every year, is for the economically weaker farmers," he said.
( With inputs from ANI )
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