- The government of Odisha has reduced the financial assistance given to farmers under the Kalia scheme to Rs 4,000 per annum from Rs 10,000.
- This decision to reduce the Kalia assistance has been taken since Odisha government has merged the Kalia scheme with the Centres Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN).
- To keep the parity of both the schemes, in the merged scheme, farmers will now get Rs 6,000 from PM-KISAN and Rs 4,000 from KALIA to receive annual assistance of Rs 10,000.
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Also, since all the eligible farmers will get assistance from PM-KISAN from 2019-20, no assistance for Rabi-2019 will be given under the Kalia scheme to these farmers.
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The actual cultivators (share croppers) who are landless, if any, will continue to get Rs 10,000 annual assistance from Kalia, since they are not considered under PM-KISAN.
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Interest free crop loan’ under Kalia which had a provision to provide interest free crop loan up to Rs 50,000 to all farmers has been subsumed and need not be further considered under Kalia.
