There were many difficulties in the crop insurance schemes during previos government with insufficient claims, insured amount was less, delay in settlement of claims, said Union Minister for Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare and Rural Development Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Tuesday.

While answering questions related to Crop Insurance Scheme in the Lok Sabha today, the minister said farmers and farmer organizations had many objections in the previous schemes.

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“I am proud to say that Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought the new Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana,” he added.

Earlier, 3 crore 51 lakh applications were received for crop insurance and now 8 crore 69 lakh applications have been received, while the gross insured amount has increased to more than 2.71 lakh crore rupees.

Farmers have paid a premium of Rs 32 thousand 404 crore and in return they have been given a claim of Rs 1.64 lakh crore.

He said that if the crop is damaged due to natural reasons, then that too is fully covered and the farmer gets its benefit. According to the old crop insurance, the loanee farmers’ was compulsorily insured and the bank itself deducted the insurance premium amount. The government has removed this anomaly and made the scheme voluntary.

So far, 5 lakh 1 thousand hectares of area has been covered in it, which has increased to 5 lakh 98 thousand hectares in 2023, 3 crore 57 lakh farmers have been covered, he said.

The government has taken several measures to simplify the scheme, so that the farmer does not face any problem in taking advantage of the schemes, he added.

Further on the schemes for the states, he said there are 3 different models of Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, and state government chooses the model it wants.

“Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana is for every district of the country. Earlier there were discrepancies in the unit of the scheme that the block itself was made the unit. Now the Gram Panchayat has been made the unit, so that if a farmer in the Gram Panchayat incurs loss, his loss can be compensated properly.”

The minister said it has been made mandatory to conduct at least four crop cutting experiments in every Gram Panchayat.

It has been made mandatory to assess the crop loss of at least 30 per cent through remote sensing. He said that this is the reason why there is a delay in the payment of claims.

“When we looked at the reasons for the delay in insurance payments, 98.5 per cent of the reasons were the delay in the release of premium amount by the state governments,” he added.

The minister requested to the state governments not to delay the release of premium amount from their side.