Indian Economy News

Mr. Narendra Singh Tomar launched the PM Kisan Mobile App with a face authentication feature

Under the ambitious and popular "Pradhan Mantri (PM) Kisan Samman Nidhi" scheme of the central government to provide income support to farmers, Mr. Narendra Singh Tomar, Minister of Union Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, inaugurated the PM-Kisan Mobile App with a face authentication feature. A farmer may simply do e-KYC remotely by scanning their face without a one-time password (OTP) or a fingerprint.

The Government of India has extended the ability of farmers to execute e-KYC to officers of state governments, so that each officer can finish the e-KYC procedure for 500 farmers, in recognition of the necessity to make e-KYC essential.

According to Mr. Narendra Singh Tomar, the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi is a very comprehensive and ambitious scheme of the Government of India. The state governments have played a very important role in its implementation, and as a result, can the instalment of the scheme to approximately 8.5 crore farmers after KYC. He added that PM-Kisan is now an innovative scheme whose benefits are provided directly to farmers by the central government, bypassing any middlemen. Only with the aid of technology is it now possible to benefit such a wide number of farmers.

One of the largest Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes in the world, PM Kisan provides farmers with three payments of US$ 73.2 (Rs. 6,000) through bank accounts connected to their Aadhaars. More than 11 crore farmers, including more than 3 crore women farmers, received US$ 30 billion (Rs. 2.42 lakh crore) in transfers to their accounts.

The new app is very easy to use and can be easily downloaded from the Google Play Store. Farmers can use this app to learn about the status of land seeding, the Aadhaar-bank account link, and e-KYC utilising the No User Status Module. The department has also ordered Common Service Centres (CSCs) to organise village-level e-KYC camps with the aid of States/UTs and India Post Payment Bank (IPPB) to open Aadhaar-linked bank accounts for beneficiaries at their doorstep.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.