BHUBANESWAR: The State Government on Tuesday requested the Centre to extend cut-off date for registration of farmers under Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) till August 16.
Raising the issue in a letter to Union Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik requested him to issue suitable directives to safeguard the interest of farmers of Odisha.
Stating that Odisha with a long coastline is prone to various natural calamities like drought and flood, the Chief Minister said keeping in view the instructions of the Centre for covering at least 40 per cent of the farming population under PMFBY, the State Government has launched widespread publicity campaign.
The Chief Minister said, elaborate plans have been made for covering 25 lakh farmers and 20 lakh hectares under the programme to provide a safety net to the farmers. The 25 lakh farmers include 22 lakh loanees.
While the registration of farmers had picked up momentum, the entire system got upset due to snags in the Central crop insurance portal, Naveen said. The linking of common service centre portal (the main registration point for non-loanee farmers) to crop insurance portal had failed, thereby increasing the load on the banks who were already busy with covering the loanee farmers, he said.
The Chief Minister said, at this crucial juncture, the facilities of directly uploading of data by the banks as well as the offline utility also did not work. As a result, the farmers were compelled to run from pillar to post for registering under the programme, he said and added that at certain places even law and order problem arose due to complete failure of the system of registration.