BENGALURU: The Central government on Friday released Rs 1,235.52 crore to Karnataka as compensation from National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF) for failure of kharif crops in 2016.
The Centre had earlier released Rs 450 crore out of the total Rs 1,782 crore and the remaining was released on Friday, after adjusting Rs 96.92 crore as balance with the State Disaster Relief Fund (SDRF). The amount approved was 67 per cent of what the state government had sought -- Rs 4,702.54 crore.
The High Level Committee (HLC) which recommended the amount based on a report prepared by the inter-ministerial drought teams which visited farms across the state, has advised that the state disburse the amount directly to the bank accounts of beneficiaries.
Officials of the Revenue Department stated that they were giving financial assistance to the extent of 80 per cent with Rs 6,800 per hectare for rain-fed crops, Rs 13,500 per hectare for irrigated crops and Rs 18,000 per hectare for perennial crops by adding Rs 221.00 crore from the state government fund.
This time around, the Revenue Department which has already disbursed Rs 671.2 crore of the funds directly to the Aadhaar-linked bank accounts using the new software ‘Parihara’, has asked farmers who have not linked their accounts to do so immediately.
“We have drastically reduced the time taken to disburse the amount with the new system, where the data maintained by Bhoomi monitoring cell is sent to the Deputy Commissioner for digital signature. These files are then sent to the G-seva of State Bank of Mysore (SBM). SBM uploads it to NPCI (National Payment Council of India) and NPCI transfers funds to the farmers’ bank accounts seeded with Aadhaar,” Revenue Principal Secretary Gangaram Baderiya said.
So far, Rs 671.2 crore has been transferred directly into the bank accounts of 12,02,940 farmers in the state.