A special drive to cover farmers under Kisan Credit Card (KCC) is going on since February 2020. As per the information furnished by Public Sector Banks & NABARD, 187.03 lakh KCC with credit limit of ₹ 1.76 lakh crore have been sanctioned to farmers across the country during this drive upto 29^th January 2021.

This was stated by Shri Anurag Singh Thakur, Union Minister of State for Finance & Corporate Affairs in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

In order to ensure that all eligible farmers are provided with hassle-free and timely credit for their agricultural operations, the Government had introduced the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) Scheme to enable the farmers to purchase agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilisers, pesticides, etc. The KCC Scheme has been simplified further w.e.f. 2012, which has the provision of ATM enabled debit card with, inter alia, facilities of one-time documentation, built-in cost escalation in the limit, any number of withdrawals within the limit, etc.

The total number of KCC issued in the country as reported by RBI (Scheduled Commercial Banks) & NABARD (Cooperative Banks & RRB) during last three years are given at Annexure-I & Annexure-II respectively.

Kisan Credit Card expansion increases farmer access to timely agricultural credit and simplified ATM-enabled features nationwide. A nationwide drive since February 2020 resulted in sanction of 187.03 lakh Kisan Credit Cards up to 29 January 2021 to provide eligible farmers timely credit for agricultural inputs. The Kisan Credit Card Scheme, simplified since 2012, features ATM enabled debit cards, one time documentation, built in cost escalation in limits and unlimited withdrawals within sanctioned limits, with issuance data reported by RBI and NABARD in annexures.