BHUBANESWAR : Deputy chief minister KV Singh Deo on Thursday requested Union Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan for early integration of the state’s CM-Kisan portal with PM-Kisan portal for inclusion of a large number of eligible farmers to avail the benefit of the central assistance.
Participating at the national conference on agriculture for Kharif Campaign-2025 in New Delhi, Singh Deo, also the state Agriculture minister, made a strong plea for early resolution of some key issues of Odisha pending before the ministry for consideration. Integration of web platform of the state with the Centre is one of the main issues.
The deputy CM said, around 51 lakh farmers across the state received the second dose of CM-Kisan assistance through direct benefit transfer (DBT) on the auspicious occasion of Akshaya Tritiya on April 30. “However, only 35.11 lakh out of 35.61 lakh registered farmers received PM-Kisan assistance for December-March of 2024-25 enabling them to prepare for the upcoming kharif operation. Integration of the state portal will benefit more than 16 lakh farmers of the state to avail the central assistance under PM-Kisan,” he said.
He further requested Chouhan to approve the state government’s proposal to upscale cultivation of pulses in rice fallow areas to 2.5 lakh hectare under the central government’s targeting rice fallow area for pulses (TRFA-Pulse).
Informing Chouhan that the state has around 16 lakh hectare rice fallow areas, Singh Deo said the state government has planned to increase the comprehensive rice fallow management (CRFM) to 4.55 lakh hectare in the current kharif season out of which 3.45 lakh hectare will be under the state-funded CRFM scheme while the balance 1.10 lakh hectare under the central government’s TRFA-Pulse and TRFA-Oilseed schemes.
“We want to leverage the availability of soil moisture post-rice harvest which is a climate resilient regenerative practice for increasing pulse production in the state,” Singh Deo said.
The other demand of the state before the Centre is to revise the ‘farm gate pack house’ norm as majority of farmers in the state are under small and marginal category and financially not capable to avail the financial benefit of the scheme amounting to `25 lakh per unit. The Union minister was requested to revise the cost norms to `6 lakh per unit for the benefit of the poor farmers. The farm gate pack house enables farmers to clean, grade and pack their produce ultimately improving their market value.