Rs 1,600 crore to be disbursed to 35 lakh MP farmers on Dec 18

Insurance claims amounting to Rs 1,600 crore arising out of crop loss will be disbursed on December 18 and deposited in bank accounts of 35 lakh farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Wednesday.

He made the announcement while addressing a 'Kisan Sammelan' in Jabalpur.

A large number of farmers from various districts of the Jabalpur division, including Jabalpur, Narsinghpur, Chhindwara, Balaghat, Mandla, Dindori, Seoni and Katni, attended the meet.

Chouhan said Rs 1,600 crore will be deposited in bank accounts of 35 lakh farmers on December 18 to cover crop loss suffered by them.

The chief minister lashed out at his Congress predecessor Kamal Nath for not contributing on time the state governments share of premium amount of crop loss insurance for farmers.

As a result, the farmers did not get timely benefit of insurance money for crop failure, said Chouhan, who assumed office in March this year after the 15-month-old Nath government collapsed.

The state government has decided to give a sum of Rs 4,000 to each farmer - in installments - in addition to Rs 6,000 from the Centre given under PM Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM Kisan), the chief minister said.

Chouhan accused Nath of not extending the benefit of the PM Kisan scheme to the farmers of Madhya Pradesh by not sending the list of beneficiaries to the Centre.

He said the BJP government is committed to eliminate "gunda, mafia and muscle power" in Madhya Pradesh and efforts are on free government land from encroachers.

Chouhan took a dig at Congress Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh, saying during his tenure as Madhya Pradesh chief minister (19932003), he did not complete a single irrigation project.

He reiterated that mandis will not be closed in the state and farmers can continue to sell their produce there, an assurance coming in backdrop of the ongoing protests by cultivators who are demanding scrapping of the Centre's new agri-marketing laws.

Farmers in Madhya Pradesh are free to sell their produceoutside the existing mandis and on e-platform, he added.