Few states debar 4 insurance firms from PMFBY due to complaints: Govt

The Centre on Tuesday told Parliament that some state governments like Rajasthan, Karnataka and Gujarat have debarred four insurance firms -- SBI General Insurance, Tata AIG, Shriram General Insurance and UIIC -- from participating in tender of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bhima Yojana (PMFBY) for one or more seasons.

Some state governments have also slapped interest penalty on the Agriculture Insurance Company of India (AIC Ltd), Cholamandalam-MS General Insurance Company, ICICI-Lombard General Insurance Company, New India Assurance Company and SBI General Insurance Company, it said in the Lok Sabha.

The PMFBY was launched in January 2016 replacing the older schemes to ensure that farmers pay less premium and get full and early settlement of the claims.

In a written statement, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said the government had received some complaints against insurance firms about non-payment and delayed payment of claims during the implementation stage of the scheme.

"Most of the complaints were suitably addressed by the concerned state government, insurer and the ministry. Yield data disputes between states and insurance companies are settled by referring the matter to the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) by the state or insurance companies," he said.

Further, some states have not only debarred some insurance companies from participating in the tender of PMFBY but also slapped interest penalty for delayed payment of claims to farmers, he added.

According to the revised guidelines of PMFBY, insurance companies have to pay penal interest at 12 per cent per annum to farmers for late settlement of claims subject to certain conditions.

Tomar said the government has imposed an interest penalty of Rs 3.30 crore on Agriculture Insurance Company of India, Rs 0.09 crore Cholamandalm-MS General Insurance Company, Rs 0.51 crore ICICI-Lombard General Insurance, Rs 0.15 crore New India Assurance Company and Rs 0.16 crore SBI General Insurance Company Ltd in September 2019.

In reply, these insurance companies have submitted their explanations requesting for review. A meeting has been called to discuss the explanations submitted by the insurance companies, he added.

Apart from this, the minister said state governments have been advised to impose penalties on insurance companies themselves.

Accordingly, some state governments like Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Haryana have also imposed penalty on insurance companies for non-performance of certain provisions of the scheme and have deducted the penalty from state share of premium subsidy to insurance companies, he added.

Eighteen companies, including five public sector companies, have been empanelled for implementation of the scheme in country by the Union agriculture ministry. But, all the companies are not participating in the bidding process in each state or season.

Responding to another query, the minister said though the coverage during second year of implementation, 2017-18, of PMFBY slightly decreased due to announcement of loan waiver schemes by some state and making Aadhaar compulsory for de-duplication of coverage, but coverage is showing increasing trends due to the improved features of the scheme and efforts made by the government and other stakeholders.