Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar, informed the Parliament on Tuesday that crop insurance claims under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) remained pending to an extent till 2021-22. The minister stated that claims worth about Rs 2,761.10 crore remained pending till 2021-22, with most claims pending in Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Gujarat.
According to a PTI report, the delay in settlement of claims happened due to factors like delayed transmission of yield data, late release of their share in premium subsidy, disputes between insurance companies and states regarding the yield, and others, the minister stated in his written reply in the Parliament.
Generally, the claims under the PMFBY are cleared by the concerned insurance companies in two months of harvest period completion and one month of notification for invoking the risks of prevented sowing, adversity in the middle of the season, and losses post-harvest, the report noted. The process is also dependent on the timely receipt of a total share of premium subsidy from the central government.
Based on the data, Tomar informed that the claims worth Rs 2,716.1 crore under the scheme remained pending till the crop year of 2021-22, i.e., July-June. In this share, Rajasthan had the most number of pending claims, worth Rs 1,387.34 crore, followed by Maharashtra with claims worth Rs 336.22 crore, Gujarat with claims worth Rs 258.87 crore, Karnataka with claims worth Rs 132.25 crore and Jharkhand with claims worth Rs 128.24 crore.
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The report also noted that all the main work regarding crop yield/loss assessment to figure out the acceptability of claims and their worth is being done by either state governments on their own or as a joint partnership between respective state government officials and insurance companies.
The minister further added that there have been instances of complaints against the insurance companies regarding non-payment and delayed payment of claims under the scheme. But he assured that most of the complaints have been addressed and resolved.
The government has taken steps to provide claim settlements to farmers on time, Tomar added. The central share of subsidy for the time period Kharif 2018 to Rabi 2020-21 has been released by the government, by delinking the share with the states’ subsidy share, he explained.
He also noted that claims worth Rs 209.57 crore have been handed out by the insurance companies on a pro-rata basis, helping almost 4.82 lakh farmers in the country. Further, he said that the central government intervened in Jharkhand and helped disburse claims worth Rs 764 crore for the Kharif 2018 to Rabi 2019-20 time period.
Tomar stated that their department is focused on supervising the insurance companies through the means of video conferences with all stakeholders on a weekly basis, personal meetings, and national review conferences, to ensure that claims are settled on time.
Additionally, the ‘Digiclaim Module’ has been introduced to facilitate payment of claims from Kharif 2022 onwards to help keep a watch on the claim disbursement process. The module integrates the National Crop Insurance Portal (NCIP) with PFMS and the accounting ecosystem of insurance companies and helps ensure a timely and transparent claim disbursal.