Crop insured without farmers' consent in Chhattisgarh

Business Standard: Raipur: Saturday, 03 October 2015.

Hirasingh Markam, a farmer in Chhattisgarh’s Dhamtari district, was elated that he did not owe any debt during kharif season 2014-15.

He had not taken farm loan under the government scheme to keep himself debt-free. But when he received the statement from the agriculture credit cooperative society, he was shunned.

The document underlined that an amount of Rs 4,000 had been deducted from his Kisan Credit Card (KCC) account that he had to repay.

Markam, who owned 10 acres of land in Nagri of Dhamtari district, approached the authorities and informed that he had not availed the farm loan and hence was ineligible for crop insurance.

The crop insurance was mandatory for those farmers who had taken loan. Ironically, the authorities said a loan had been sanctioned in his name (not disbursed) and hence he was covered under the crop insurance scheme.

"This was not a single incident, over a million farmers across the state had been duped in the name of crop insurance," Ramashankar Gupta, Right to Information (RTI) activist, said.

After collecting relevant documents and details through the RTI Act, Gupta alleged that the entire exercise was to help the private insurance companies that were engaged in crop insurance scheme last year, Gupta said.

According to Gupta, Rs 335 crore premium amount was deducted from the farmers’ account without their consent and paid to the insurance companies.

He added that the crops that were not notified under the scheme were also covered and premium deducted from the farmers’ account. Moreover, a farmer taking crop in two acres of land was forced to pay premium for 10 acres of land that had been mentioned in the KCC records.

Former Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Ajit Jogi had demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the matter.

"The farmers did not know and their farm, crops were insured,” Jogi said.

The scheme was weather based but the insurance companies did not install the required instrument for rainfall measurement and denied claims to farmers, he added. Besides the private insurance companies, the senior officials of the agriculture department and administration were also accountable, Jogi said.

Chhattisgarh’s agriculture minister Brijmohan Agrawal denied speaking on the issue.