The 15 per cent drop in farmer enrolment under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) in 2017-18 as compared to 2016-17 was due to announcement of debt waiver schemes by the States like Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, perceived risk reduction on account of better monsoon and deduplication in Aadhaar made mandatory for coverage, the Government told the Rajya Sabha on Friday.
As against an enrolment of 5.72 crore under the government-sponsored crop insurance scheme in 2016-17, only 4.87 crore farmers opted for scheme in 2017-18. Parshottam Rupala, Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmer Welfare, said in a written reply that the Government has allocated ₹13,014.15 crore for PMFBY in 2018-19 as against ₹9,419.79 crore in the previous fiscal. The maximum reduction in enrolment was in Karnataka where the numbers dropped by 42 per cent, followed by Rajasthan where it went down by 34 per cent. The drop in enrolment was 22 per cent in Uttar Pradesh, 18 per cent in Bihar and 16 per cent in Maharashtra.
The PMFBY enrolment, on the other hand, went marginally up in the States like Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana and Sikkim. Exception, however, was Jharkhand where the enrolment in 2017-18 was about 34 per cent higher than the previous year.