Ground Report: 3.2 Crore Eligible Farmers Still Outside PM-KISAN — Land Records and Bank Seeding Failures Blamed

The PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme has paid ₹6,000 per year to over 9.4 crore farmers in 17 instalments since its launch in February 2019, making it India's largest direct-benefit transfer programme for agriculture. But government data tabled in Parliament in February 2026 shows that 3.24 crore identified beneficiaries — households verified as eligible under the scheme's land-ownership criteria — have never received a single instalment, despite being registered.

Three Reasons Eligible Farmers Are Excluded

NT reported from 11 villages across Barmer (Rajasthan), Koraput (Odisha) and Sitamarhi (Bihar) over three weeks in April. The most common failure — cited in 41% of exclusion cases — was a mismatch between land records held by the revenue department and the name on the Aadhaar card. In Rajasthan, land is often registered in the name of a deceased parent or grandfather; the farmer tilling it has no legal title, and therefore no eligibility.

“I have 3 bigha land. My father's name is on the patta. He died in 2019. I went to the patwari five times to get the mutation done — each time I was sent back for a different document. I still don't have PM-KISAN.”

— Suresh Meena, farmer, Barmer district, Rajasthan

The Aadhaar-bank seeding issue was the second most common barrier. Seventeen of the 44 farmers NT met in Sitamarhi, Bihar, had completed registration but had their instalments returned to the government because the NPCI mapper — the system that links Aadhaar to a bank account — showed their accounts as inactive or seized. In several cases, accounts had been declared dormant due to zero-balance status even though the farmer had an active Kisan Credit Card with the same bank.