By establishing nexus with insurance companies, people in Government and Administration have committed a scam to the tune of around Rs150 crore in Chhattisgarh on the pretext of implementing climate-based crop insurance scheme during the last financial year, alleged former Chairman of State Finance Commission and social activist Virendra Pandey and an RTI activist Ramashankar Gupta.
Making scathing attack on the ruling BJP Government, Gupta charged that the weather-based crop insurance scheme for farmers is implemented on such terms that it will not benefit farmers in any situation. The objective of implementing scheme on such term-sheet is to benefit insurance companies, they stated.
“The documents collected under RTI revealed that the term-sheet for weather-based crop insurance scheme was actually prepared by insurance companies and its implementation was carried out by a State-level Committee,” alleged Pandey, adding that in any condition, the interest of insurance companies will not be hurt.
Pandey further said that a Public Interest litigation (PIl) against this massive corruption will soon be filed in Chhattisgarh High Court. He also demanded a high-level probe in this connection. “There are around 10 lakh farmers in the State and insurance of their crops was carried out at the rate of Rs 2000 per hectare. The insurance scheme has benefited as many as 6 lakh farmers while 4 lakh farmers were devoid of benefit,” Gupta alleged.
“Due to conditions of insurance scheme, each farmer faces a loss of around Rs1500 which resulted in corruption of around Rs150 crore,” he said. For promotion and publicity of this insurance scheme, insurance firms did not spend any amount and on contrary to this, the State Government has paid huge amount for its publicity, claimed Gupta.