Kendrapada: Altogether 8,85,504 farmers in Odisha have been enrolled under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) for which the govt has disbursed Rs 2,580.06 crore to farmers in the past five years, Union agriculture minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan informed the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. Replying to a question by MP Sangeeta Kumari Singh Deo, the minister said that all major works such as selection of insurance model and insurance companies through transparent bidding process, enrolment of farmers, assessment of crop yield/crop loss and uploading of threshold yield and actual yield on National Crop Insurance Portal (NCIP) for calculation and payment of admissible claims directly to the farmer’s account are being performed by the state govt or a joint committee of govt officials and insurance company concerned. The roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder are defined in the operational guidelines of the scheme for proper execution. Insurance companies settle majority of claims within stipulated timelines under operational guidelines of the scheme. However, during implementation of PMFBY, some complaints were received in the past about payment of claims, which are primarily owing to delay in providing the state govt’s share of subsidy, non-payment/delayed payment or under-payment of claims on account of incorrect/delayed submission of insurance proposals by banks, discrepancy in field data and consequent disputes between the state govt and insurance companies, among others. “Pending claims on account of these issues are settled after their resolution as per provisions of the scheme,” added the minister.The govt has undertaken development of NCIP as a single source of data ensuring subsidy payment, co-ordination, transparency, dissemination of information and delivery of services, including direct online enrolment of farmers, uploading/obtaining insured farmers’ details for better monitoring and to ensure transfer of claim amount electronically to the individual bank accounts. To rigorously monitor claim disbursal process, a dedicated ‘Digiclaim Module’ has been operationalised for payment of claims, from 2022 kharif season. “It involves integration of NCIP with the public finance management system (PFMS) and accounting system of insurance companies to provide timely and transparent processing of all claims,” Chouhan said.De-linking of central govt share of premium subsidy has been implemented so that farmers can get proportionate claims relating to the share. As per operational guidelines, in case payment is not made timely by insurance company, a penalty of 12% is auto-calculated and levied through NCIP, from 2024 kharif season. Similarly, if the state govt delays its premium subsidy, a penalty of 12% is to be paid by them. “Also, towards leveraging technology in implementation of the scheme, various steps like capturing of yield data/crop-cutting experiments (CCEs) data through CCE-Agri app & uploading it on the NCIP, allowing insurance companies to witness the conduct of CCEs, integration of state land records with NCIP, etc,” added the minister.
