Odisha government Tuesday urged the ineligible beneficiaries of KALIA scheme to voluntarily refund financial assistance availed by them in order to maintain transparency in the system.
The state government through public advertisements in newspapers said that people who consider themselves as ineligible but got assistance in their bank accounts should contact the panchayat office and refund money at the banks.
After making the names of 51 lakh KALIA (Krushak Assistance for Livelihood and Income Augmentation) beneficiaries public, the state government geared up to drop the ineligible beneficiaries.
The names of all the beneficiary farmers have been uploaded in the official website of agriculture and farmer empowerment department.
Under the scheme, a farmer gets Rs 5,000 financial assistance per crop. A farm household is entitled to get Rs 10,000 per year for two crops (Kharif and Rabi).
All small and marginal farmers along with landless agricultural households, vulnerable agricultural household, landless agricultural labourers and sharecroppers/actual cultivators are eligible under different components of KALIA.
Agriculture Secretary Saurabh Garg said of the total 51 lakh farmer beneficiaries, 37 lakh were small and marginal farmers while remaining 14 lakh come under landless farmers' category.
He said the list of the beneficiaries will also be displayed on the walls of each gram panchayat from August 6 till August 14 in order to identify ineligible beneficiaries.
"Those, who voluntarily want to delete their names from the KALIA beneficiary list, can do so by filing up a specific form," Garg said.
He also said that the left out beneficiaries, who were not included under the KALIA scheme so far, can now apply for enrolling themselves under the scheme.
Garg said that the government has received nearly one crore applications for inclusion in the scheme while efforts are on to identify genuine beneficiaries and remove fake ones.
The government has formed committees at panchayat, block and district levels for idenifying the fake beneficiaries, he added.
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