Gandhinagar, 24 July 2014

Three Congress MLAs were suspended from the assembly for half day on Thursday after they protested online form system for agriculture crop insurance.

Congress MLAs Raghavjibhai Patel, Punjabhai Vansh and Bholabhai Gohel had given notice under rule 116 leading attention to Agriculture Minister on online form system and hike in cotton insurance premium on Wednesday. However the government refused to discuss this very important issue of farmers.

The three MLAs from Jamnagar and Visavdar then attempted to make representation in the assembly. They said in most of the villages there’s no facility for online application. At many places computers of government run E-dhara centers are not working. Farmers are not able to do online registration. At many places farmers are compelled to visit cyber cafe, and therefore it has imposed additional financial burden on them.May farmers are likely to miss opportunity to file online form.

Not only this but the last date of submitting form 31st of July is too close, and farmers are given too short time period to apply, they added.

The MLAs said, under the crop insurance scheme, premium for groundnut for over Rs. 44,800 loan was 3.50% which has been increased to 26.40%. Similarly cotton premium was 8.50% for loan upto Rs. 62,000 and government was giving 5% subsidy. This premium is now 17.19%.

They said, in the past both centre and state were sharing 50-50% amount of claim for failure of cotton crop, but now the government is planning for an arrangement under which only insurance firm may settle claim, and state government has pulled out from the scheme.