BHUBANESWAR: The State Government has expedited its process for deletion of ineligible beneficiaries of KALIA scheme. The Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment department on Wednesday issued a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to exclude ineligible farmers and a new set of rules to include eligible left out beneficiaries.
As per the SOP, if multiple members from an eligible farmer’s family have received aid under the scheme, all of them except the head of the household will have to refund the money. The family will not get any assistance under the scheme further if they do not refund. The State Government had announced to extend financial assistance of `5,000 each for five crop seasons per farm family.
Similarly, farmers below 18 years of age having agriculture land of over five-acre, Government officials, pensioners, income taxpayers, incumbent or former MLAs/MPs, Ministers, former Ministers, Zilla Parishad members and people holding constitutional posts have to refund if they have received assistance under the scheme.
The department has appealed to ineligible beneficiaries to voluntarily apply for exclusion of their names and urged people to lodge a complaint against such beneficiaries, list of whom has been displayed at panchayat offices and uploaded in KALIA website.
Agriculture Minister Arun Sahu said three separate committees at panchayat, block and district levels have been formed to clean up the beneficiary list. “Field-level verification and checking from the available database are on. We will take a final call after the process is over on August 14,” he added.
While nearly one crore applications have been received from across the State, the Government has so far provided KALIA assistance to 51 lakh farmers.