Govt working to make Fasal Bima Yojna more beneficial:Tomar

Agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar Wednesday told the Lok Sabha that the government is working on making Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna more useful and beneficial and invited suggestions from members on the same. "Earlier also there was PM Fasal Bima...Today there is focus on PM Fasal Bima. But my Prime Minister and I do not consider this PM Fasal Bima Yojna complete scheme...

"Through you, I want to tell the members that with regard to PM Fasal Bima Yojna (ki drishti se) if they have some valuable suggestions they can give them to me in three-five days," the minister said. He was replying to queries raised by members during the discussion on Demand for Grants under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare.

"We are working on how can we make the PM Fasal Bima Yojana easier, more useful, more beneficial, the minister said. During the tenure of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said more funds were allocated under the PM Fasal Bima Yojana than it was prior to 2014 during the UPA regime.

Stating that now more educated people were taking to farming, he said technology was also being used in it. With regard to doubling of farmers' income, Tomar said a big target and a roadmap has to be made and the result cannot be visible in a day.

Over 10 crore Soil Health Cards have already been allocated, he said, adding work on allowing 9.82 crore cards in the second phase is underway. The government, he said, is working on zero budget farming.

The Centre also took a decision on Neam coated urea, he said, stressing the farmers were getting sufficient urea and the big queues for getting it can no more be seen. The black marketing in Urea, he said, has also come to an end.

The Centre is working on providing Kisan Credit Cards to all farmers, the minister said. Stating the country welcomed the PM-KISAN scheme, Tomar said the scheme was not merely a slogan."We should rise above politics and welcome it".

The work on agricultural mechanisation was underway, he said, adding that "the agricultural land and farmers would be made smart." The Lok Sabha later approved the Demand for Grants under Control of Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. N K Premachandran (RSP) withdrew the cut motion has had moved on the issue.

After Tomar's reply, Mulayam Singh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) said farmers were the poorest even though "they worked the most." Stating that all the businesses were in profit, he said the farmers were incurring a loss.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)