By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, May 10, 2017 : Odisha government on Wednesday included seven major crops – paddy, groundnut, cotton, turmeric, ginger, red-gram (arhar) and maize – under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) for the kharif season, 2017.

This was decided at the State Level Coordination (SLC) Committee meeting on Crop Insurance held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary A P Padhi. Last year, five types of crops – paddy, groundnut, cotton, ginger and turmeric – were covered under the PMFBY.

PMFBY is being implemented in Odisha since kharif 2016 season. A total number of 17.63 lakh farmers cultivating around 12.57 lakh hectare were brought into the insurance fold, an official release said adding that about Rs 68.88 crore was insured for the farmers.

Around Rs 530 crore was paid as premium to the insurance companies. During this season around Rs 422 crore of claim was raised by the farmers from all 30 districts that were divided to 5 clusters for the purposes of crop insurance.

“The claim ratio under Pradhan Mantri Phasal Bima Yojana ( PMFBY) in Odisha has been raised to the level of 80% during the Kharif -2016 season as a result of constant follow up and extension activities at the ground level”, the release added.

As per earlier decisions, tender has already been called from the insurance companies. The tenders are in the process of scrutiny and examination, said Manoj Ahuja, the secretary of agriculture and cooperation department.

Reviewing the progress, Padhi directed the department to enhance the security net by bringing in more and more non- loanee farmers to the fold of crop insurance. Representatives of the insurance companies, present in the meeting, were asked to disburse the insured sum to the farmers within 15 days of the final crop cutting report.

Padhi emphasised that since the crop cutting experiment was done through application of remote sensing and mobile apps, there should be no confusion in expediting settling the claims. Odisha is a leading state in application of remote sensing and mobile apps in crop cutting experiment.

This was started from Kharif, 2016 with 33,000 live samples collected from various parts of the state. Development Commissioner R. Balakrishnan, participating in the deliberations advised the department to do due diligence for identifying the actual tilling farmer who suffered the crop loss in the whole process of insurance.