Insurance co rejects 850 farmers’ applications, admn seeks reply

Ravinder Saini

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, March 30

The district administration has sought a reply from Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Company Ltd for rejecting 850 applications submitted by non-loanee farmers to get policy under the Prime Minister Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) for kharif crops. The company declined the applications, citing deficiencies in documents.

DC seeks company’s communiqués sent to farmers asking deficiencies to be removed

Taking a serious note of it, Deputy Commissioner Manoj Kumar has directed the company to provide all those communiqués sent to the farmers concerned asking them for getting the deficiencies removed.

He stated that the company was bound to pay compensation to the farmers for their crop loss if it failed to verify the applications to get insurance policy within two months after the cut-off date, hence the company needed to intimate the farmers concerned within the stipulated time on finding any deficiency in their documents.

Sources said the DC took the action at the district level monitoring committee (DLMC) meeting for the PMFBY following the complaints of the farmers who accused the insurance company of rejecting their claim applications, pleading that they were not entitled to get compensation for their crop loss as their applications for the policy were rejected due to deficiency in the documents.

The matter came to the fore when 128 farmers, who suffered loss in their paddy, cotton and bajra crops due to water-logging and hailstorm, lodged their complaints against the company with the local office of the Agriculture Department, which then placed the matter at the meeting of the DLMC held on March 26, the sources added.

“A total of 6,289 non-loanee farmers voluntarily applied to get the policy under the PMFBY for the kharif season 2020, but the Bajaj Allianz Insurance Company rejected 850 applications on the grounds of deficiencies in the documents. A total of 128 persons among them later filed claim applications to get compensation for their crop loss,” said Rohtas, deputy director (agriculture).

He maintained that the company was, as per the rules, was bound to issue notice to the farmers before rejecting their applications, hence a reply had been sought from the company in this respect. The company would be liable to pay compensation if any procedural lapse was found on its part, he added. Parveen, district manager of the insurance company, could not be contacted for comments.

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