BHUBANESWAR: In a move to weed out fake farmers and stop malpractices during registration for sale of surplus paddy under minimum support price (MSP) in the ensuing kharif marketing season 2025-26, the state government has made Aadhaar-based e-KYC mandatory for them.
The state government has decided to do away with the old practice of renewal of registration and conduct the process afresh with farmers required to provide personal, land and bank details.
“Farmers will give their consent for both Aadhaar-based e-KYC registration and Aadhaar e-KYC-based payment through iris scan. Payment will be made to the account linked with Aadhaar number,” said a circular issued by Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare department to all district collectors.
The farmers’ registration has commenced from July 19 and will continue till August 20.
“Farmers have been advised to complete the registration process within the stipulated date in their respective primary agriculture cooperative societies (PACS) or large area multi-purpose cooperative societies (LAMPS) failing which they will be debarred from the procurement process,” FS&CW minister Krushna Chandra Patra told mediapersons here on Tuesday.
The Aadhaar based e-KYC for farmers’ registration was introduced after a similar exercise done for elimination of 5.3 lakh dead and ghost ration cards and 20.58 lakh cardholders not reporting for self-authentication.
“In case of sharecroppers, they have to obtain a consent letter from the landowner and submit the same along with the registration form,” the minister said.
Since the PACS and LAMPS are designated agencies for paddy procurement on behalf of the Odisha State Civil Supplies Corporation (OSCSC), the department has directed the secretaries of the societies to ensure that non-agricultural variety of lands are not entered into the system during registration.
The department has cautioned that the secretaries will be held responsible and taken to task along with the field survey staff if discrepancies are detected.
The state government has also decided that all plots registered in the farmers’ registration module will be verified through satellite imagery to ascertain if they are agricultural lands as claimed by individual farmers.