Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Dec 10 (PTI) Authorities have found that nearly 1.75 lakh farmers in eight districts of Maharashtra submitted wrong data to avail of more benefits that they were eligible for under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, a central crop insurance scheme, officials said.
After the alleged wrongdoing by farmers was found in Solapur, Pune, Satara, Ahilyanagar, Dhule, Nashik, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Beed districts, the state agriculture department has sought them to be made ineligible for the crop insurance scheme.
Solapur tops the list among these eight districts as discrepancies were found in the data provided by as many as 36,438 farmers, they said.
The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) was launched in 2016 with the aim to support farmers by providing an affordable comprehensive risk cover for crops.
A report by the state agriculture department said that during the on-site inspection in the eight districts, it was found that a total of 83,911 farmers sought insurance of the onion crop even as that they did not grow it on their farms, while 60,258 others mentioned more land in their applications than they actually possessed.
As per the report, 30,600 applicants did not respond to the inspection process by the authorities, while 73 farmers were found to have applied for the crop insurance scheme more than twice for the same land. The department also sought disqualification of 56 farmers from the scheme for some “other reasons”.
According to the report, the total number of farmers from the eight districts who gave the wrong data stood at 1,74,972 and the land involved in this irregularity is 95,765.64 hectares.
The highest number of 36,438 farmers are from Solapur district who sought insurance for onion farming on 23,912 hectares of land, although this crop was not found there during the inspection, the report said.
It said that 60,258 farmers across the eight districts submitted applications for the insurance scheme for 28,086 hectares of land. Under this head also, Solapur district tops the list with nearly 41,865 farmers and 23,893 hectares of land involved.
Though the name of Beed district is mentioned in the report, the figures for the district were not available.
Talking about the figures in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, a top official from the agriculture department in the district said, “During the on-site inspection, irregularities were found from the farmers’ side in availing the crop insurance scheme. For the rabi season, we received applications from 13,286 farmers for insurance of onion crops on 8,910 hectares of land.” “But in our on-site inspection, we found that in the applications from 1,098 farmers, no such crop was found to have been grown on 805.48 hectares of land despite the claim. Besides, we also found that nearly 2,500 farmers gave wrong data in which they showed a total of 428 hectares of surplus land that they did not actually possess,” he said. PTI AW NP
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