Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami participated in the PM Kisan Utsav Diwas event on Saturday, 20 June 2026, joining from Dehradun as Prime Minister Narendra Modi transferred more than ₹18,880 crore to over 9.44 crore farmers across India through Direct Benefit Transfer under the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme. The central event was held at Tarakeshwar, Hooghly, West Bengal, with state capitals connected virtually to mark the installment release.

Context

Addressing those gathered in Dehradun, CM Dhami confirmed that approximately 8 lakh farmers in Uttarakhand received a combined ₹159.63 crore as part of this installment. Posting on X in Hindi, Dhami described the transfer as a direct expression of dूरदर्शी नेतृत्व ('visionary leadership') by PM Modi, crediting the scheme for economically empowering the farming community.

The funds were routed entirely through the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) mechanism, which deposits money directly into beneficiary bank accounts without intermediaries, reducing leakage and ensuring timely delivery.

Policy Backdrop

The PM Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme was launched in February 2019 as a central sector programme providing ₹6,000 per year in income support to eligible landholding farmer families, disbursed in three equal installments of ₹2,000 each. The scheme operates entirely through DBT, with beneficiary lists maintained by state governments and verified against land records.

Periodic installment releases are typically marked by national-level events where the Prime Minister formally initiates the transfer, with state chief ministers and local elected representatives joining simultaneously from their respective capitals. This format underscores the coordinated centre-state delivery architecture of the programme.

Uttarakhand has consistently aligned its state agricultural policy with PM-KISAN, emphasising natural and organic farming alongside modern agricultural technology adoption — priorities that CM Dhami reiterated in his address, urging farmers to adopt वैज्ञानिक एवं तकनीक आधारित खेती ('science- and technology-based farming') to raise productivity and profitability.

Stakeholders and Impact

At the national level, the 9.44 crore-plus beneficiaries span small and marginal farmer families across all states and union territories. The ₹18,880 crore-plus disbursed in this single installment represents one of the largest single-day direct welfare transfers in the country's agricultural sector.

In Uttarakhand specifically, the 8 lakh beneficiary farmers receiving ₹159.63 crore include smallholders in both the hill districts and the Terai belt. The state government has been promoting organic and natural farming as a value-addition strategy for hill farmers, and the PM-KISAN income support provides a financial floor that makes such transitions more feasible.

The Dehradun event was attended by Member of Parliament Naresh Bansal, Cabinet Minister Ganesh Joshi, and MLA Savita Kapoor, reflecting the BJP's coordinated mobilisation of elected representatives at the local level to amplify the scheme's visibility among beneficiaries.

What's Next

The next PM-KISAN installment cycle will be watched for any revision in beneficiary counts or per-family amounts, as the government periodically updates eligibility lists. For Uttarakhand, attention will turn to state budget allocations for organic farming promotion and whether new guidelines emerge to incentivise technology adoption among hill farmers. CM Dhami's public call for science-based agriculture signals that the state intends to build on the income-support foundation of PM-KISAN with targeted productivity interventions.