Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister, Edappadi K Palaniswami has now blamed the central government for the scam in PM Kisan Scheme. He said that the Central government’s step to relax the enrollment’s norms led this scam as 5.5 lakh ineligible people siphoned off the Rs. 110 crore planned money.
CM Palaniswami also stated that, the Tamil Nadu’s government will do everything to expose the scam, and they ordered a CB-CID inquiry as well.
In close to a 50% of the state districts ineligible 5.5 lakh applicants have received Rs. 110 crore. The government through a series of the process had already retrieved Rs. 32 crore from the accounts of the ineligible applicants.
The individual banks are been asked by the central government to freeze the accounts of the ineligible people.
“We took up the matter with the chairmen of SBI and several public sector banks as well to speed up the recovery process,” said the state agriculture secretary Gagandeep Singh Bedi.
So far the state authorities have suspended 34 government officials and dismissed more than 80 contractual employees. The CB-CID arrested 18 people as well who are linked in this scam.
“The action against the government servants is primarily for dereliction of doty. But if anyone is found to have connived with the fraudsters, criminal action will be initiated against them. Such details will be known only as the CB-CID probe progresses. It was our officials who first reported it. As the magnitude of the fraud looked big, we ordered officials in all districts to check for the claims by ineligible people and also ordered the CB-CID probe,” said Agriculture Secretary Bedi.
“The government must terminate the regular staffs involved in the scam. People must register cases against the corrupt contract and regular employees and common service center agents and arrest them,” Cuddalore Farmers representative, KV Elankeeran.
