Why it is in news?

•  Non-payment or partial payment of crop insurance to farmers in Gujarat despite the State having collected high premiums, is emerging as a major issue in the poll-bound State.

What is the issue?

•  In Saurashtra’s Dwarka, Jamnagar, Rajkot, Amreli and Junagadh districts, there have been thousands of complaints on non-payment of crop insurance last year.
•  There has been huge delay in starting the process for filing claims and settling them. This is a major issue in the region,
•  In 2016, the NDA government launched the Pradhan Mantri FasalBimaYojna and Restructured Weather-based Crop Insurance Scheme to help and protect farmers against chronic crop losses due to natural calamities.
•  As many as nine companies were roped in by the government and they together collected premiums worth Rs. 22,000 crore across the country. 

‘Limited manpower’

·         For kharif crop in 2016 in Gujarat, the State government was required to collect 77,844 crop cutting samples but as per the government’s own records, it had manpower to collect only 22,000 samples,”

·         The insurance companies paid only paltry amount as crop insurance in villages of Rajkot. The claim settlement ratio is also very low,