The Centre on Friday announced the delinking of its premium share with States’ contribution under crop insurance scheme for faster claims settlement as farmers were suffering despite paying their share of premium at the time of enrollment.

Under the Prime Minister Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), farmers pay a nominal 2 per cent of the sum insured as premium in kharif season and 1.5 per cent in rabi and 5 per cent for cash crops in both seasons. The remaining premium amount, derived after tender for different crops in different clusters, is shared at 50:50 by Centre and States.

Addressing an event to launch separate portal and a mobile APP, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said that farmers were without their fault waiting for claims payment for a long time despite paying their share of premium. “Now we have decided that Centre will pay its share in time, even if their is delay by States, so that claims can be settled, either fully or partially,” Tomar said.

As States were defaulting in paying their share of premium subsidy, the Centre too was not releasing its share.

Last year, the Centre had mooted a proposal for States and Centre to build a corpus where some portion of premium subsidy could be deposited in the form of bank guarantee and in case of default, that BG can be encashed. However, many states had opposed the proposal, and finally it was shelved.

Tomar also formally released a mobile app called AIDE, which will help intermediaries enrol farmers under PMFBY as so far the enrolment was allowed only through banks or common service centres (CSCs).

This year, already 30,441 applications have been enrolled though the APP since July 1 with a coverage of 22,762 hectares in 6 states by 11 insurance companies, said Ritesh Chauhan, CEO of PMFBY.

“This (AIDE) is a collaboration which has been offered through UNDP and Absolute. As both banks and CSCs being brick and mortar channels, the farmer has to actually visit them to get enrolled, whereas traditionally insurance is sold through intermediary channels. But it was lacking within the PMFBY ecosystem,” said Chauhan.

As the digital platform help in doorstep enrollment, he said only those intermediaries certified by IRDA will visit the farmer and get him enrolled. It will be paperless with SMS and WhatsApp integration for error-free data entry.

Due to adoption and integration of technology in PMFBY, officials said, the premium amount in this year bidding has come down to lower than 10 per cent of sum insured where it used to be 14-15 per cent in earlier seasons.

The government also unveiled guidelines on YES-TECH, a yield estimation system based on technology. Chauhan said it is basically an automation of the crop yield estimation, based on remote sensing and other technologies. The agriculture ministry has collaborated with ICAR and ISRO to develop the protocols.

After two years of pilot studies, these estimation models have now been standardized under Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre, he added.

The government also launched WINDS portal for collection and dissemination of weather and other related data for farmers.

Against ₹29,598.43 crore premium collected by insurance companies the total claim paid was ₹17,881.43 crore in 2021-22. Though the claim for 2022-23 is yet to be finalised, as on July 20 it was ₹5,760.80 crore against gross premium of ₹27,900.78 crore, Tomar said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.

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