Village-wise farmers' list to avoid errors in govt reports:

The Maharashtra government has decided to publish a village-wise list of farmers who have opted for crop insurance as well as the crop-wise area under cultivation in order to avoid errors in reports, a senior state Agriculture department official said today.

The move comes after the state government was left red-faced when the Centre pointed out that, in the former's report submitted to the NDRF, the area of cotton crops affected by pink bollworms in 12 districts was shown as more than the total area of cotton cultivation in these districts.

"Every village-level governing body will have a detailed list of farmers, cultivated crop and amount of insurance. It will help the state administration to ascertain if the correct details regarding total area under cultivation and crops have been entered in the government database," the official said.

 

"It was a major embarrassment when figures for 12 districts in the state showed that the area of cotton cultivation attacked by pink bollworms was more than the total cultivated area itself. The Centre pointed out this error to the state," he said.

This year, 86 lakh farmers had opted for crop insurance while 83 lakh farmers had enrolled for it last year, out of which 45 lakh were benefited, the official said.

The premium for the crop insurance scheme is set at 20 per cent of the farmer's expenditure. While the farmer pays only two per cent of this, the rest is paid by the state and Centre.

Officials said that claims worth Rs 2,500 crore had been settled while Rs 3,337 crore had been sought from the National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF).

However, the figures submitted to the NDRF as part of the fund request were erroneous, the official admitted.

"The report submitted to the NDRF showed total damaged area in districts such as Aurangabad and Jalna at 4.4 lakh hectares and 3.7 lakh hectares respectively. In reality, the total area of cotton cultivation in Aurangabad is 4.1 lakh hectares and in Jalna is 2.8 lakh hectares," he said.