Farmers facing problems due to Aadhaar being compulsory

Kolkata: The state government will write to the Centre about the problems faced by farmers in making Aadhaar compulsory.

Farmers in the state are facing trouble as they could not get benefits of the crop insurance with the Aadhaar becoming compulsory.

The state is wrote opposing the move of the Centre in making the Aadhaar compulsory to get benefits and it is leading to harassment of farmers in the state.

The state government will seek immediate response from the Centre in this regard.

It may be mentioned that the state government is paying the premium of crop insurance of farmers. This doesn't happen in any other state.

More importantly, more than 25 lakh farmers have been brought under the coverage of crop insurance.

Bengal is the first state

in India where the state government contributed the total 100 percent of the farmers' share of premium for crop insurance. The state government has also started giving the total of the farmers' share of the premium to potato cultivators as well.

In the past six years after Mamata Banerjee government came to power, the state government had distributed agricultural input subsidy worth Rs 1,336.43 crore among 32.83 lakh farmers for crop damage due to natural calamities like hailstorm, unseasonal heavy rain, flood, drought etc under State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) and this was the first time ever when any state government had given such a high amount as input subsidy relief to farmers.

Till October end, 57.7 percent of children below age 5 have got Aadhaar cards while 74.3 per cent of people aged between 5 to 18 years have got Aadhaar cards.