3 years on, crop insurance claims of 24,000 Haryana farmers yet to be settled

Tribune News Service

Deepender Deswal

Hisar, March 16

Crop insurance claims worth around Rs 54 crore of 24,005 state farmers have accumulated with the banks for the past three years as the amount hasn’t been transferred into their accounts.

“The crop insurance firms have released the claim amounts but these got stuck with the banks. The transaction of insurance claim was aborted as the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system rejected the process for many bank accounts,” an official of the Agricultural Department said.

List released

• The Agriculture Department has released and uploaded the list of such farmers on its website and told them to approach its district offices with relevant documents
• The department officials said the payments couldn't be transferred due to reasons like closed bank accounts and wrong IFSC code

Other department officials said the payments couldn’t be transferred due to reasons such as closed bank accounts, wrong IFSC code and other technical errors.

However, a number of farmers who had insured their crops under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna (PMFBY) in the past three years said they had been running from pillar to post with their bank details and other particulars for years. It emerged that the merger of 14 public sector banks in anchor banks like State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Indian Bank and Canara Bank had resulted in the change of the IFSC code of bank branches, which was the key reason behind the non-payment of the claim amounts.

Agriculture Dept assisting farmers

We are assisting the farmers who are coming to the district office to get the claims. We furnish the updated details with the banks concerned for crediting the pending claims into the accounts of the farmers. —Babu Lal, Deputy Director, Agriculture Department, Sirsa

The department has now released and uploaded the list of these farmers on its website and asked them to approach its district offices with relevant documents for the disbursal of the amount.

A senior official of the Agriculture Department said a number of farmers had approached its district offices and the staff was trying to get the updated details of their bank accounts from the Reserve Bank of India.

A farmer, Mahender Singh of Shamsukh village in Hisar district said his compensation claim of about Rs 1 lakh of cotton crop was stuck since 2020 after Allahabad Bank was merged with the Indian bank. “I have submitted the bank account and new IFSC code three times, but haven’t got the amount,” he added.

Sirsa district has maximum number of such cases. As many as 8,090 farmers are waiting for the claim amount. Sumit of Jogiwala village in the district said he was yet to get a claim of Rs 27,000 for wheat crop failure two years ago. “I have closed my Kisan Credit Card but I still have a savings account in the same bank. I gave details to the bank and visited the branch in Chopta town twice as well as in the district office at Sirsa twice. But still the issue hasn’t been addressed,” he said.