Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana

What was Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana?

Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana was Chhattisgarh's flagship farm income-support scheme, run by the Farmers Welfare and Agriculture Development Department through the Directorate of Agriculture and the state's cooperative network. The scheme was launched on 21 May 2020 and paid registered farmers a per-acre input assistance grant, money for seed, fertiliser, labour and other cultivation costs; over and above the price received at a government procurement centre.

The scheme is written locally as Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojna and in Hindi as राजीव गांधी किसान न्याय योजना; the abbreviation RGKNY appears in most state circulars of the period. All three names refer to the same programme.

Chhattisgarh's reason for building the scheme this way was legal rather than political. The Centre fixes a Minimum Support Price for paddy, and a state cannot lawfully pay above MSP at the procurement counter itself. Paying the difference separately, as an input grant tied to acreage, allowed the state to raise the farmer's effective realisation without disturbing the central procurement mechanism. Every later Chhattisgarh paddy scheme, including the present Krishak Unnati Yojana, has kept that same design.

The scheme's main features

• State-funded, with about Rs 5,700 crore reported as the first-year budget allocation.
• Assistance computed per acre of the registered sown area, at a rate notified by the state cabinet for each season and crop.
• Payment made in four instalments through Direct Benefit Transfer.
• Coverage of roughly 19 lakh farmers in the first year, rising to 23.99 lakh farmers in the October 2022 transfer.
• No standalone application form: entitlement flowed from the farmer's existing Cooperative Society registration.

Is Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana still open?

Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana is closed to new applicants. Following the change of government after the 2023 assembly election, the input-assistance programme was restructured and relaunched as Krishak Unnati Yojana on 12 March 2024. On that day the state transferred Rs 13,320 crore to more than 24.75 lakh farmers for the Kharif 2023-24 season, at a rate of Rs 917 per quintal of paddy sold.

The practical consequence for a farmer is straightforward. A farmer who wants paddy input assistance today does not look for the Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana name at all; the same registration and the same procurement receipts now generate the payment under the successor scheme. Anyone still offering to "enrol" a farmer in Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana for a fee is not describing a live government process.

This page remains useful for two groups: farmers reconciling old bank credits from 2020 to 2023 against their sale records, and readers who want to understand how the current scheme came about.

Who was eligible for Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana?

A farmer qualified if:

• The farmer was a cultivator resident in Chhattisgarh.
• The farmer's name and sown area were registered with the local Cooperative Society or Primary Agricultural Credit Society for the relevant season, with land records and girdawari entered.
• The farmer grew a notified crop — paddy, maize or sugarcane at launch, extended from 2020-21 to pulses and oilseeds.
• The farmer sold through the government procurement system where the crop was procured by the state.
• The farmer held an Aadhaar-seeded, DBT-enabled bank account.

A farmer was not eligible if:

• The farmer never completed the seasonal registration, in which case no acreage existed against which to compute the grant.
• The land was not recorded in the girdawari as sown with a notified crop.
• The farmer was a landless agricultural labourer. The state announced an intention to bring this group in during a second phase, and separate labour schemes such as Rajiv Gandhi Gramin Bhoomiheen Krishi Mazdoor Nyay Yojana were created for them instead.
• The crop was sold entirely to private traders, outside the procurement record.

Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana applied no caste condition and no income ceiling. Small, marginal and larger growers were treated alike, with the amount scaling by registered acreage rather than by social category.

How much did Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana pay?

The per-acre rate under Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana was notified afresh by the state cabinet for each season and crop, so no single figure describes the whole life of the scheme. Rates for non-paddy crops were deliberately set at or above the paddy rate in later years, to encourage farmers to shift some acreage away from paddy towards pulses, oilseeds and horticulture.

What the published record does confirm is the scale of disbursement:

• About 19 lakh farmers received assistance in the first year of the scheme.
• On 17 October 2022, the state transferred Rs 1,745 crore to 23.99 lakh farmers as Kharif input subsidy.
• The first-year budget allocation was reported at about Rs 5,700 crore.

Payment was split into four instalments across the year rather than paid as a lump sum, so that money arrived close to the points in the crop cycle when input costs actually fall due. If you are checking old records, expect four separate credits per year in the passbook, not one.

Because the rate varied by season, a farmer reconciling an old payment should compare the credit against the rate notified for that particular season, not against a figure quoted for a different year.

How to apply for Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana

Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana never had a standalone application form, and it is now closed. The steps below are the route that generated the entitlement then and that generates it under the successor scheme today.

1. Visit your Primary Agricultural Credit Society or Cooperative Society before the season and complete or update your farmer registration, giving Aadhaar, land records (B-1 and Khasra) and bank account details. Registrations and updations normally open around August each year.
2. Check with the Patwari that your girdawari entry shows the correct crop and the correct sown area. This entry, not your own declaration, decided the acreage on which assistance was computed.
3. Confirm at your bank branch that the account is Aadhaar-seeded and DBT-enabled, since every instalment was paid by Direct Benefit Transfer and an unseeded account simply fails.
4. Sell your crop at a government procurement centre during the state procurement window, on the date given in your SMS token, and keep the tol parchi for every sale.
5. Watch for the state's announced transfer dates and check the credit in the same account that received the procurement payment.

Farmers who need the current process should follow the identical route under Krishak Unnati Yojana, which is the live scheme.

How to check an old Rajiv Gandhi Kisan Nyay Yojana payment

1. Check the passbook of the account used for the crop sale, looking for four separate credits in the relevant year rather than one.
2. Ask the Cooperative Society for the printed statement of registered acreage and quantity sold against your registration number.
3. Take that statement and your tol parchis to the District Deputy Director of Agriculture if a credit is missing entirely.

Why payments failed under the scheme

• Bank account not Aadhaar-seeded, or dormant, so the DBT bounced.
• Name mismatch between the Aadhaar record, the land record and the bank account.
• Girdawari error, the sown area recorded was smaller than the area actually cultivated, capping the grant.
• Account changed after registration without informing the society.
• Registration in another family member's name, so the credit went to their account rather than the cultivator's.

Each of these was fixed at source: the bank for seeding and dormancy, the Patwari for girdawari, and the Cooperative Society for account and acreage records. The same failure list applies to the current scheme, which is why it is worth checking these three things before a season rather than after a transfer.

Where to raise a grievance

• The Primary Agricultural Credit Society where the registration was made, the first and usually fastest stop.
• The District Deputy Director of Agriculture, at the district collectorate or Krishi Vibhag office.
• The District Food and Civil Supplies Officer, for disputes about procurement quantity and tol parchi entries.
• The state agriculture portal at agriportal.cg.nic.in, for departmental contacts and circulars.

Old dues from a closed scheme are handled by the same district agriculture office that handled them when the scheme was live. Bring the registration slip, the tol parchis and the passbook showing the missing period; a claim without the society's acreage statement is difficult to pursue.