With Andhra Pradesh deciding to rejoin the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) from the ongoing kharif season, the Centre is reaching out to the five other states—Bihar, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Telangana and West Bengal—to bring them back on board to implement the crop insurance scheme. These six states had implemented the PMFBY initially but opted out at different times in the last four years. The first state to opt out was Bihar in 2018-19. West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh left the PMFBY in 2019-20, while Telangana, Jharkhand and Gujarat opted out in 2020-21. On Tuesday, the Agriculture Ministry announced that Andhra Pradesh has decided to “rejoin” the PMFBY following talks between Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar and Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy. Union Agriculture Secretary Manoj Ahuja had met Reddy and then a team gave a presentation to him regarding the scheme on July 7. Source said when Andhra Pradesh decided to opt out, it had mentioned four reasons: first, the scheme should be voluntary; second, states should be given options to choose risk; third, the scheme should be universal, and the cut-off date for enrollment should be flexible; and fourth, the state should be given option to use their own database of E-crop, an application used by the AP government to collect information about crops. “All these issues have been resolved now. Therefore, the state has decided to rejoin the PMFBY,” an official said. Sources said the other five states had different issues and the Agriculture Ministry is reaching out at the official as well as political levels to convince them to join back. On July 1 this year, PMFBY CEO Ritesh Chauhan, who is also the Joint Secretary in the Agriculture Ministry, had written to the Bihar government regarding addressing the state’s concerns, sources said. Bihar had implemented the PMFBY during the initial two years—2016-17 and 2017-18. The ministry also wrote to Jharkhand that opted out of the PMFBY in 2021-22. Besides, the ministry is also in talks with Telangana. A team of the Central officials had made a presentation in front of a group of Telangana ministers on June 23. Sources said Gujarat is also expected to rejoin the scheme after the assembly elections. However, sources were not sure about when West Bengal will rejoin the scheme. The ministry’s focus on bringing these states back on board is significant as the Parliamentary Standing Committee had asked the government to look into the reasons behind schme's non-implementation by certain states. The Standing Committee on Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Food Processing, headed by BJP member PC Gaddigoudar, had asked the department to address the issues and make the scheme more attractive and beneficial to the farmers, especially in the states prone to natural calamities. Earlier in February 2020, the government had revamped the PMFBY by restricting its premium subsidy to its flagship crop insurance schemes to 30% for unirrigated areas, and 25% for irrigated areas (from the existing unlimited), and to make the enrolment of farmers voluntary from the 2020 kharif season. The government had launched the PMFBY in 2016. At that time, 27 states and Union Territories had implemented the scheme.
