Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana

What was Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana?

Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana was a farm income support scheme of the Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Cooperative Department, Government of Jharkhand, announced in 2019. Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana: often written locally as Krishi Ashirwad Yojana or simply MKAY, put cash into the hands of small and marginal farmers before the kharif sowing season, calculated on the size of their recorded landholding rather than on the crop they grew.

The design was deliberately simple. Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana paid Rs 5,000 for every acre of recorded cultivable land, subject to a floor of one acre and a ceiling of five acres. A farmer with half an acre received the full one-acre amount of Rs 5,000. A farmer with five acres or more received the maximum of Rs 25,000 a year. Payment was made by direct benefit transfer into the farmer's Aadhaar-seeded bank account, so the money did not pass through any intermediary.

Why the scheme mattered in Jharkhand

• Jharkhand's farm sector is dominated by very small holdings, which is why the ceiling was set at five acres rather than at a larger figure.
• Much of the state's cultivation is single-crop and rain-fed, so cash at the start of the kharif season was the point at which seed and fertiliser had to be bought.
• The grant was unconditional. There was no requirement to grow a particular crop, buy from a particular dealer, or produce a yield certificate afterwards.

Is Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana still open?

No. Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana is closed to new applicants. The scheme ran for the 2019-20 cycle and was discontinued after the change of state government, when Jharkhand's headline farm relief effort moved to the Jharkhand Krishi Rin Mafi Yojana agricultural loan waiver.

Two practical signs confirm the closure for any reader trying to apply today. First, the scheme's dedicated website no longer resolves at all. The domain that once hosted the MKAY application and beneficiary search has been withdrawn. Second, current Jharkhand budget documents no longer carry a line item for Krishi Ashirwad. According to PRS Legislative Research's analysis of the 2024-25 Jharkhand budget, the state's named agriculture allocations were the loan waiver scheme at Rs 346 crore and the State Horticulture Development Scheme at Rs 320 crore; Krishi Ashirwad does not appear.

This page therefore exists as a factual record, and as a warning: several private websites still run "Krishi Ashirwad Yojana registration" pages and some agents still collect fees for it. No fee, no form and no agent can enrol you in a scheme that has no operating portal.

Who was eligible for Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana?

A farmer could receive the grant if:

• The farmer was a resident of Jharkhand.
• The farmer held cultivable land recorded in their own name in the state revenue records, the khatiyan entry or a current lagan rasid (rent receipt) was the evidence used.
• The recorded holding was up to 5 acres. Land beyond five acres earned nothing extra.
• The farmer had a bank account seeded with Aadhaar, because the whole scheme ran on direct benefit transfer.

A person was not eligible if:

• The person did not hold land in their own name. This excluded bataidar (sharecropper) and tenant cultivators, and it excluded agricultural labourers entirely, the single largest criticism made of the scheme's design.
• The land record was in a deceased ancestor's name and had not been mutated, since the payment engine matched the applicant's name to the record.
• The applicant was not a Jharkhand resident, since the scheme was funded wholly from the state budget.
• The land was not classified as cultivable in the revenue record.

Today, nobody is eligible, because the scheme is not accepting applications.

What documents did Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana require?

The document list is preserved here because farmers who received a partial payment in 2019-20 are sometimes asked for the same papers when they raise a query at the block office.

How to apply for farm support in Jharkhand now that Krishi Ashirwad is closed

Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana cannot be applied for. The realistic steps for a Jharkhand farmer seeking support today are these:

1. Register for PM-KISAN at pmkisan.gov.in or at your nearest Pragya Kendra (Common Service Centre). PM-KISAN pays Rs 6,000 a year in three instalments of Rs 2,000 to land-holding farmer families and, unlike Krishi Ashirwad, is a live central scheme with a working portal and an Aadhaar-based e-KYC step.
2. Check your eligibility for Jharkhand Krishi Rin Mafi Yojana at jkrmy.jharkhand.gov.in, the state's agricultural loan waiver portal. The loan ceiling for waiver was raised to Rs 2 lakh and defaulted loans were brought into scope in the 2024-25 budget.
3. Enrol for Jharkhand Rajya Fasal Rahat Yojana if your concern is crop loss. The state runs this in place of a premium-based crop insurance product, and registration is free.
4. Update your land record first. Every one of the three routes above depends on a clean revenue record. If your khatiyan is still in an ancestor's name, file for mutation (dakhil kharij) at the circle office before you apply for anything else.
5. Seed Aadhaar into your bank account. Each of these schemes pays by DBT, and an unseeded account is the most common reason a sanctioned payment never arrives.

How were Krishi Ashirwad payments made and checked?

Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana paid directly into the beneficiary's bank account. Verification ran through the block agriculture machinery: the block office matched the applicant's Aadhaar and land record, the district office approved the list, and the payment was released centrally.

While the scheme was live, beneficiaries checked their status on the scheme's own portal using an Aadhaar or account number, and at block-level camps run before the kharif season. Neither route exists now. A farmer with a query about a 2019-20 payment should go directly to the Block Agriculture Officer, and if the block cannot resolve it, to the District Agriculture Officer.

Why did Krishi Ashirwad payments commonly fail?

Even while the scheme was running, the same handful of problems accounted for most failed payments, and they are worth knowing because they recur in every Jharkhand farm scheme:

• Aadhaar not seeded to the bank account, so the DBT transfer bounced.
• Land record not mutated after an inheritance, leaving the applicant's name absent from the khatiyan.
• Name spelling mismatch between Aadhaar, the bank record and the revenue record — extremely common where names are transliterated differently.
• Joint holdings where several heirs shared one khatiyan entry and only one claim could be processed.
• Land recorded as non-agricultural, which put the plot outside the scheme.

Each of these is fixable at the circle office and the bank branch, and fixing them is worthwhile even now, because the same records govern PM-KISAN, the loan waiver and crop loss relief.

Where to raise a grievance

• Block Agriculture Officer in your block; first stop for any question about an old Krishi Ashirwad payment or a current land record.
• District Agriculture Officer at the district headquarters, for unresolved block-level matters.
• Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Cooperative Department, Government of Jharkhand, Ranchi; phone 0651-2490929 or 0651-2490578, email jhagriculture@gmail.com.
• Jharsewa (jharsewa.jharkhand.gov.in). The state service delivery portal, used for residence, caste and income certificates that farm schemes require.

No government office charges a fee to answer a query about a discontinued scheme, and no official will ask for your OTP or bank password.