Gauhati HC directs Assam to act over PM-KISAN ineligible payouts

What the Record Shows

The Gauhati High Court, disposing of PIL/73/2020 (Amguri Naba Nirman Samity vs The State of Assam and 10 Ors) on 25 November 2022, directed the Assam government to take action against erring officers and to implement the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme strictly in accordance with its guidelines. A bench of Chief Justice R.M. Chhaya and Justice Soumitra Saikia recorded that roughly 11.72 lakh ineligible beneficiaries had received scheme benefits in the state.

The court noted that the state had by then recovered about Rs 1.50 crore from ineligible recipients, that departmental proceedings had been initiated against agriculture officers, including District Agriculture Officers and Agricultural Development Officers, and that an FIR had been lodged in Bongaigaon over fraudulent additions to the beneficiary rolls. Having recorded the state's affidavit undertaking to act, the court closed the petition with directions rather than any finding of criminal guilt.

Separately, a performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, reported in November 2024, put the amount claimed by ineligible beneficiaries in Assam at about Rs 567 crore for the period December 2018 to March 2021. It is important to read that figure precisely: most of it reflects payments to people who did not qualify under the scheme rules, which is a compliance failure, and no court has found that Rs 567 crore was criminally misappropriated.

How It Worked

On the record before the High Court and in the CAG's audit, the leakage flowed from the way beneficiaries were enrolled. Data was uploaded to the PM-KISAN portal at speed and, the audit found, without the eligibility checks the scheme requires. The credential at the centre of the system is the Agricultural Development Officer's portal login, the field-level certification that a claimant is genuinely a cultivating farmer.

The resulting rolls, per the audit, included categories the scheme expressly excludes: non-farmers, serving government servants, income-tax payers, minors and even deceased persons, alongside cases where a single farmer drew into multiple bank accounts. The audit reported that a large share of the flagged beneficiaries could not be traced to any identifiable person at all. It also traced about Rs 3.01 crore in unauthorised payments to 3,577 registrations the auditors found to be fake, spread across 16 districts, a smaller and more serious subset than the broad ineligibility figure the court had earlier noted.

The criminal thread runs through Bongaigaon. The FIR lodged there by the District Agriculture Officer alleges that 734 names were fraudulently added to the beneficiary list, and arrests followed. Across the state, departmental enquiries were opened against a group of field officers, reported as 16 District Agriculture Officers and 98 Agricultural Development Officers. These are administrative and investigative steps: the departmental enquiries test service conduct, the FIR sets a criminal investigation in motion, and neither is a conviction.

Who Lost Money

The scheme is funded entirely by the central government, which pays eligible farmer families Rs 6,000 a year in three instalments, so the party that bears the leakage is the PM-KISAN central budget. The CAG's Rs 567 crore is an audit estimate of what ineligible claimants drew in Assam, not a sum a court has ordered anyone to repay.

The second set of losers is harder to count but real: eligible Assam farmer families crowded off rolls that were padded with names that should never have been on them. Recovery has been slow. The audit recorded that only a tiny fraction of the flagged amount had been recovered as at October 2021, and the figure the High Court noted a year later, about Rs 1.50 crore, remained a small share of the total. Readers tracking how enforcement and recovery actually play out in scheme-leakage cases can follow the enforcement archive, and our report on the CBI fertiliser-subsidy investigation into IFFCO and Indian Potash shows the same tension between a headline figure and what is finally recovered.

Where It Stands Now

As of the latest official record, the matter sits across three tracks, none of which has reached a verdict. The public interest litigation was closed by the Gauhati High Court in November 2022 with directions, on the state's undertaking to act. The departmental enquiries against the field officers were, on the reported position, still in progress, and re-verification of beneficiaries was ordered under the district commissioners. The Bongaigaon FIR remains a live criminal investigation.

The CAG performance audit reported in November 2024 post-dates the court's order and quantified the leakage the court had flagged in 2022, but an audit is a finding about systems and compliance, not a criminal adjudication. An FIR contains allegations, not findings of guilt; the officers and others named are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and due process continues. Nothing in the public record establishes that any named officer criminally misappropriated funds.

What It Means

PM-KISAN is a direct-benefit-transfer scheme, which means eligibility is everything: the money moves automatically to whoever is on the verified list, so the integrity of the list is the whole control. This case shows what happens when field-level verification is treated as a formality rather than a check, and it is why the scheme has since pushed mandatory eKYC, Aadhaar seeding and land-record linkage for beneficiaries.

The practical lesson for readers is to separate two very different failures that a single large number can hide. Paying an ineligible person is a compliance and recovery problem that audits and re-verification are designed to catch; fabricating a beneficiary is a criminal one that an FIR and a trial must resolve. Genuine farmers can confirm their own status and instalment history on the official PM-KISAN portal and complete eKYC to avoid being flagged in a clean-up drive. Audits like this one are not the scandal; they are the system finding its own leaks, which is how a public scheme is supposed to be policed.

FAQ

What did the Gauhati High Court order on 25 November 2022?

The court, in PIL/73/2020, directed the Assam government to take action against erring officers, to follow the PM-KISAN eligibility guidelines strictly, and to honour the undertakings in its affidavit. It recorded that about 11.72 lakh ineligible beneficiaries had received benefits and then closed the petition with directions, without any finding of criminal guilt.

What did the CAG audit find?

The CAG performance audit, reported in November 2024, put the amount claimed by ineligible beneficiaries in Assam at about Rs 567 crore for December 2018 to March 2021, and traced about Rs 3.01 crore in unauthorised payments to 3,577 registrations it found to be fake. Most of the larger figure reflects ineligibility, a compliance failure, and no court has found it to be criminal fraud.

Does this mean the officers named are guilty?

No. Departmental enquiries and an FIR contain allegations, not findings of guilt. The officers and others named are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and due process continues. The court itself closed the PIL with directions rather than any adjudication of criminal liability.

How much has been recovered?

Recovery has been limited. The audit recorded that only a small fraction of the flagged amount had been recovered as at October 2021, and the High Court noted recovery of about Rs 1.50 crore in November 2022. Re-verification of beneficiaries was ordered to continue the clean-up.

Where can I read the official order?

The Gauhati High Court order in PIL/73/2020, dated 25 November 2022, is published on Indian Kanoon and linked at the end of this report.

This report is based on the Gauhati High Court order dated 25 November 2022 in Amguri Naba Nirman Samity vs The State of Assam (PIL/73/2020) and the CAG performance audit as reported, reviewed on 3 August 2026.