Mann govt to provide digital J-Forms to farmers from April 1

Chandigarh: In a bid to ensure transparency and empowerment of farmers, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann led the government on Thursday decided to make available digital J-Forms to the farmers across the state from April 1, 2022.

Appreciating this novel initiative of the Punjab Mandi Board (PMB), Bhagwant Mann said that it would benefit over 9 lakh registered farmers thereby furnishing J-Forms digitally to them for their agriculture products sold in mandis on their WhatsApp accounts in real-time i.e. immediately on sale being confirmed on the system by the arthias and buyers.

Terming this farmer-friendly endeavour as a landmark decision, Bhagwant Mann said this move would aim at providing real-time access to system-generated authentic digital J-Forms to farmers of the state, who could also download it from the PMB website https://emandikaran-pb.in, in Arthia Login ID and DigiLocker, a GoI digital document wallet.

Notably, J-Form is the sale receipt of farmer's agriculture produce in mandis and was earlier issued manually by arthias. Punjab Mandi Board is a pioneer in the country to issue e-JForms (for MSP procured Paddy and Wheat only) during the Rabi Marketing Season & Kharif Marketing Season 2021-22. According to a spokesperson of the Chief Minister's Office, these digital J-Forms for Paddy and Wheat procured on MSP would be made available 24X7. To ensure authenticity, Digital JForms comes with a QR code, watermark, and unique number. JForms in DigiLocker are legally at par with original physical documents in line with Rule 9A of the Information Technology (Preservation and Retention of Information by Intermediaries Providing Digital Locker Facilities) Rules, 2016 notified on February 8, 2017, vide G.S.R. 711(E). Digital JForm in DigiLocker can be used for raising finance from financial institutions, IT wavers, Subsidy claims, Farmer Insurance etc and can be remotely verified online, added the spokesperson.