No early relief in sight for farmers in state

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 7

After having to cough up Rs 184 crore towards premium for the insurance of their crops under the Prime Minister Fasal Bima Yojna (PMFBY), farmers do not have an early settlement of their claims worth nearly Rs 10 crore.

The Agriculture Department is yet to get any convincing explanation from bankers who are alleged to have debited extra amount of Rs 63 crore from accounts of farmers and the task of crop cutting experiments (CCEs) that determine the claims for the loss of crop is yet to be completed.

Sources said that though the department had told bankers and insurance companies last month to come clean about the accounts within three days after a difference of Rs 63 crore was detected in the amount debited from farmers’ accounts and the one paid to insurance companies towards premium, the issue is yet to be sorted out.

During insurance of farmers’ crops under the PMFBY for kharif crops, the bankers had debited over Rs 184 crore from their accounts, but the insurance companies got only Rs 121 crore as premium.

“The maximum difference of nearly Rs 50 crore is with regard to a private bank debited premium amount in cluster 2 which includes Sonepat, Gurugram, Karnal, Ambala, Jind and Mahendragarh,” said the sources.

“Our party has been opposing the PMFBY since very beginning. Hapless farmers have been divested of their money towards premium, in some cases twice or even thrice, without their knowledge. No refund is being made of the extra premium debited from their accounts. Now, their claims are being denied on technical ground that loss of crop should be from those particular acres which are pledged with the bank,” alleged Jasbir Singh Jassa, state executive committee member of the INLD.

“We are in the process of getting reports from various districts and the accounts will be tallied very soon. The work of CCEs involves a voluminous work of tabulation of data of nearly 70,000 sheets. However, we have told officials in the districts to outsource the job and it would be completed soon,” said Jagraj Dandi, Joint Director (Statistics) in the Agriculture Department.