PM Kisan Samman Nidhi pays eligible land-holding farmer families ₹6,000 a year, split into three installments of ₹2,000 each and sent straight to the bank account through Direct Benefit Transfer. The scheme has been running since February 2019 and now reaches well over nine crore families.
The money itself is simple. What causes trouble is everything around it — installments that do not arrive, status pages that show a rejection with no explanation, and e-KYC that quietly expires. This guide covers how to check where you stand and what to do when something is stuck.
How to Check Your Beneficiary Status
Go to the official portal at pmkisan.gov.in. In the Farmers’ Corner section, open Know Your Status. Enter your registration number and the captcha, then select Get Data.
If you do not know your registration number, there is a Know Your Registration Number option that will find it using your Aadhaar number or your registered mobile number.
The result page shows every installment against your name, whether it was transferred, is pending, or was rejected, along with the date and the bank account that received it. It also shows an e-KYC status column, which is the single most important line on that page.
Why Installments Get Held Up
1. e-KYC is incomplete or has lapsed
This is by far the most common reason. e-KYC is mandatory for every beneficiary, old and new. If it is not complete, the installment is put on hold automatically even when everything else about your record is correct.
You can complete it three ways: OTP-based Aadhaar authentication on the portal, biometric authentication at a Common Service Centre, or face authentication through the PM Kisan mobile app. The app method is useful for farmers whose fingerprints do not read well on biometric scanners, which is a common problem for people who do manual field work.
After completing e-KYC, wait 24 hours and then check the status page again to confirm it has registered.
2. Aadhaar is not seeded to your bank account
Having an Aadhaar number and having it linked to your bank account are two different things. DBT payments will not reach an account that is not Aadhaar-seeded. Ask your bank branch to confirm seeding status — they can check it in a minute — and to enable DBT on the account if it is not already active.
3. Name mismatch between records
If the spelling of your name differs between your Aadhaar, your bank passbook and your land record, the payment can fail verification. Even a small difference like an extra initial or a different surname spelling is enough. Get the records matched, starting with whichever one is wrong.
4. Land record verification pending
State land records have to be verified against your application. If your revenue records are outdated — for instance, if land was inherited but never mutated into your name — verification can stall. This is fixed at the tehsil or revenue office, not on the portal.
Checking the Village Beneficiary List
To see everyone in your village receiving payments, go to the Beneficiary List page on the portal and select your state, district, sub-district, block and village, then click Get Report. This is useful for confirming whether your name is on the list at all, which is a different question from whether a particular installment reached you.
Who Is Not Eligible
The scheme excludes several categories, including institutional landholders, families where a member holds or has held a constitutional post, serving or retired government employees above a certain rank, income tax payers in the last assessment year, and professionals such as doctors, engineers, lawyers and chartered accountants who are practising.
Applying while ineligible causes problems later. If a payment is made and the ineligibility is discovered afterwards, recovery proceedings follow.
Practical Advice
Check your status once every few months rather than waiting until an installment is missed. Most of the problems above are visible on the status page well before they cause a payment to fail, and all of them take time to fix.
The official helpline is 155261. Use it rather than any number found in a social media post or a forwarded message.
A Warning About Fraud
No genuine agent, website or helpline will ask for your OTP, your bank PIN, or a fee to release your installment. PM Kisan registration is free and there is no charge for e-KYC on the official portal. CSC centres may charge a small documented service fee for biometric authentication, and nothing beyond that.
Scheme rules, installment dates and deadlines change. Always confirm current details on pmkisan.gov.in before acting on anything in this article.