HC hopes Centre will look into plea for individual crop

Madras High Court today expressed confidence that the Centre would look into a plea for individual crop insurance scheme as early as possible.
A bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Pushpa Satnyanarayana made the observation while disposing of a petition by former DMK MLA M Appavu seeking crop insurance for individual farmers in Tamil Nadu.
Petitioner had sought a direction to the Central and Tamil Nadu governments to extend the crop Insurance scheme to all individuals.
"We are sure that the Central Government will look into the aspects with technical assistance of experts to endeavour for individual crop insurance scheme process as may be feasible as early as possible," the bench said.

The Centre in its affidavit submitted that it was implementing comprehensive crop insurance scheme (CCIS) with active participation of state governments with subsidy contributions both in premiums and claims.
The scheme was implemented through the General Insurance Corporation of India (GIC) and farmers availing crop loans from cooperative credit institutions, commercial banks and Regional Rural Banks for notified crops were covered under it.

The court said, "We may note that even according to the counter-affidavit of the Central Government the reduction in the unit of insurance to field/individual level will definitely be the ideal situation and lead to more realistic assessment of crop losses and payment of compensation to individual farmer- which is what the petitioner seeks through the present petition.

It was averred by the Central Government that it will require conducting greater number of Crop Cutting Experiments /weather data for assessing the yield of the insured crop at each field level and implementing states are not in a position to undertake additional CCEs because of the limited infrastructure facilities with them.
The Judges said: "The issue of agriculture crop insurance is an important as agriculture in India is still dependant on the vagaries of nature."
The bench further observed that the security of the agriculturalists in respect of the crops grown by them certainly was a matter of concern and the Centre would look in to all the aspects with technical experts to endeavour for the individual crop insurance process.