Claims under Fasal Bima Yojana decline by 48.7%

Karam Prakash

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New Delhi, December 22

Under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), the claims paid to the farmers have dropped by 48.7 per cent in the current year. The scheme was launched in 2016, across the country.

Agriculture Minister Narendra Tomar said an amount of Rs 13, 728 crore was paid against 8.31 crore applications this year. This is a great deal lower than the previous year.

In 2020- 21, the amount paid to farmers was Rs 20,425 crore against 6.23 crore applications. Of the two seasons, the major drop has been recorded in the rabi season, where it went down from 1.48 crore hectare of farmland in 2020-21 to 79.03 lakh hectare in the following year 2021-22. In the kharif season though, the drop was a little less: from 2.39 crore to 2.2 crore hectares.

In a surprise to the experts, this decline, in the farmer’s claims, has been registered despite the overall rise in farmer’s enrolment in the scheme this year, reveals the government data.

Tomar said the scheme had already become the number one crop insurance scheme in the world in terms of farmer applications enrolled. In terms of gross premium, the scheme is the third largest in the world.

The PMFBY is the scheme that provides the farmers their comprehensive risk insurance against crop damage owing to the non-preventable natural risks. The risk is counted from pre-sowing to post-harvest for the crops/areas notified by the concerned state government.

Devinder Sharma, agriculture expert, said farmers seemed to have lost faith in the scheme. He said, “The problem is that the loss is evaluated at village level rather than individual cases.”