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For the first time in any centralized care system, the government on Thursday launched a facial authentication feature in the PM-Kisan app, which will enable beneficiary farmers to complete an electronic KYC process by just scanning their faces on mobile phones instead of using a time-password or fingerprints. .
Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar launched the app feature at an event attended by Minister of State for Agriculture Kailash Chaudhary, Minister of Agriculture Manoj Ahuja, Additional Minister Pramod Kumar Miherda and senior officials from states.
Sharing details of the new feature, Miherda said, “PM-Kisan scheme has become the first scheme of the government to implement e-KYC through facial verification mobile app. This app is very useful for elderly farmers and also their mobile number is not associated with Aadhaar.”
Miherda said that the ministry started a beta test of the facial verification feature in the PM-Kisan mobile application on May 21 this year. Since then, he said, e-KYC has been implemented for 3 farmers successfully.
Until now, e-KYC was used for PM-Kisan beneficiaries either through biometrics at a designated center or one-time passwords sent to Aadhaar-linked mobile numbers.
However, during the e-KYC exercise, officials found several cases where farmers’ mobile numbers were not linked to Aadhaar because the process could not be completed, an official said. In the case of biometrics, many elderly cultivators had problems going to the nearby center. Also, many have encountered the problem of fingerprint mismatch.
Therefore, in order to facilitate the process of electronic identification of your customer, the ministry decided to introduce the facial authentication feature in the PM-Kisan mobile application, an official said.
The face authentication feature uses the iris data of a person with an Aadhaar number. “The Aadhaar iris data was available with the Unique Identification Authority of India. So, we asked them to give us access to the face authentication feature.”
In a further step, the official said the PM-Kisan scheme is also integrating with Bhashini to provide farmers with information in their native language. Bhashini is the government’s national public language digital platform for developing services and products for citizens by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
Launched in 2019, the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi or PM-Kisan Scheme provides beneficiaries with financial assistance of Rs 6,000 per annum in three equal installments every four months. The amount is transferred to the bank accounts of eligible farm families across the country through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) mode.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, more than 11 crore farmers have benefited from the scheme and an amount of Rs 2.42 crore has been transferred to their accounts.
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