The Centre on Thursday launched PM-Kisan mobile app with a face authentication feature. It also launched a campaign calling upon youth to come forward and assist farmers in getting the verification done through the app.
Launching the app in a function, Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said that “Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi” (PM-Kisan) is the Centre’s ambitious and popular scheme for income support to farmers. He said through this app, farmers can complete e-KYC easily by scanning faces without OTP or fingerprint. They can help 100 other farmers do e-KYC, he added.
The Centre has already extended the ability of farmers to perform e-KYC to officers of State Governments so that each officer can complete the e-KYC process for 500 farmers.
Farmer reach
Tomar said that PM-Kisan is a very comprehensive and ambitious scheme and State Governments have performed their role very diligently in the implementation of it. “As a result of this, we are in a position to pay the installment of the scheme to about 8.5 crore farmers after KYC. The more refined this platform, the more it will be useful for PM-Kisan and whenever any benefit has to be given to the farmers, complete data will be available with the Central and State governments, so that no problem can arise in data verification,” he said.
It has become possible to give benefits to such a large number of farmers only with the help of technology, Tomar said.
Under PM Kisan, farmers get ₹6,000 per year in three equal installments, directly transferred through Aadhaar-linked bank accounts. So far, ₹2.42 lakh crore has been transferred to the accounts of more than 11 crore farmers, of which over 3 crore are women.