‘Jharkhand to Benefit from Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana’

Ranchi, Jan 13 (IANS) Jharkhand Chief Minister Ragubar Das on Wednesday said the state would benefit from the union cabinet approving the New Crop Insurance Scheme - Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana.

"We congratulate Prime Minister Narendra Modi for fulfilling promises made to farmers of the country by bringing the New Crop Insurance Scheme - Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana. The new insurance also covers the vegetables and fruits.

"Jharkhand is one of the large producers of the vegetables and it will help the farmers of the state," said Das in a press conference here on Wednesday.

"We will table separate agriculture budget to boost the farming in the state. The concerns of the farmers will be taken care of in the budget.

"The state will do the needful to create the size of land by getting the land survey and other necessary steps," he added.

Under the new crop Insurance policy of the central government, there will be a uniform premium of only 2 percent to be paid by farmers for all Kharif crops and 1.5 percent for all Rabi crops.

In the case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, the premium to be paid by farmers will be only 5 percent.

The premium rates to be paid by farmers are very low and balance premium will be paid by the government to provide a full insured amount to the farmers against crop loss on account of natural calamities.

There is no upper limit on government subsidy. Even if balance premium is 90 percent, it will be borne by the government. Earlier, there was a provision of capping the premium rate which resulted in low claims being paid to farmers.

This capping was done to limit government outgo on the premium subsidy. This capping has now been removed and farmers will get a claim against full sum insured without any reduction.

The use of technology will be encouraged to a great extent.

Smartphones will be used to capture and upload data of crop cutting to reduce the delays in claim payment to farmers. Remote sensing will be used to reduce the number of crop cutting experiments.