Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Wednesday interacted with stake-holders across the country via video conferencing on completion of five years of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana and said there is a need to raise awareness about the scheme so that more farmers can take advantage of it.
The scheme, which was launched as a major step to provide a comprehensive risk solution at the lowest uniform premium across the country for farmers, was approved by the union cabinet on January 13, 2016.
According to a release by Agriculture Ministry, the minister also congratulated the state governments, banks and insurance compes for successful implementation of the scheme throughout the country. He cited instances where the scheme was able to safeguard the interests of farmers, such as disbursements of claims during dry spell in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, hailstorms in Haryana and locust attack in Rajasthan in 2019.
"A total of Rs 90, 000 crore have been paid as claims to farmers till now. In fact, the scheme was fully operational during the COVID-19 lockdown, distributing claims of over 8741.3 crores to 69.70 lakh farmers across India, which is highly commendable," he said, adding that it was "milestone crop insurance scheme".
The meeting was attended by over 150 representatives including officials of the state governments, banks and insurance compes.
The stakeholders discussed key features of the scheme such integration of land records with the PMFBY portal, crop insurance mobile-app, satellite imagery and remote-sensing technology for robust coverage around the country. .
The scheme was made voluntary for all farmers, post its revamp in February 2020. "Over 5.5 crore farmer applications have been received on year on year basis, taking the count of total farmer applications to over 28 crores in the last 5 years," the release said.
Agriculture Secretary Sanjay Aggrawal in his address said that the PFMBY is the largest insurance scheme in the world for farmers and is an example of effective utilisation of technology in the Agriculture sector.
( With inputs from ANI )
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