APMC insures 1.75 lakh villagers in Unjha

In a novel initiative, the Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) of Unjha in Mehsana district, has started extending insurance cover to all 1.78 lakh villagers in Unjha, India's 'Spice Capital,' and 23 villages surrounding this small town.

The Committee, which earlier had brought villagers at Unjha and few villages in close proximity under insurance coverage, has now bought insurance policy from National Insurance Company (NIC) for Rs 24 lakh which will protect the financial interest of 1.78 lakh villagers.

The villagers are not required to pay premium for the policy as the APCM has already paid premium. In last six months, since the policy has come into effect, NIC has already paid around Rs 15 lakh as claims.

Six months later, when the insurance cover will be expanded to over 2 lakh of localities covering 25 villages in Mehsana, APMC will select the insurance company through a national bidding process.

Already various general insurance companies including private players such as ICICI Lombard and Iffco-Tokio have showed keen interest in the project.

PSU insurance companies such as Oriental Insurance, General Insurance Company also have started knocking at the doors of APMC, though the tender process would begin only after four months from now.

Naran Patel, MLA and former state transport minister, who was instrumental in bringing cover o the villagers, said, "This is for the first time in the country that people living in so many villages are covered under insurance policy irrespective of their profession, age, sex and religious identity. We have brought every villager within the age bracket of 5 to 70 years under one single policy.

"The insurance policy also ensures settling claims arising out of suicidal death of farmers, if any or even of spice traders after due diligence in which APMC also takes part to probe whether the claim is fit for settlement," he added.

Patel, also the chairman of APMC, told Business Standard, "In a small scale we started this in 2002 when we bought policy from Oriental Insurance for a smaller number of people covering mainly Unjha and few villages. It cost us Rs 11.50 lakh as premium against which the company settled claims worth Rs 52 lakh."

In 2003, when we decided to include more people under the policy, once again Oriental Insurance showed interest and we paid a premium of Rs 26 lakh to cover around 1 lakh villagers. This time claims worth Rs 55 lakh was disbursed by Oriental," he said.