Mumbai: Earlier this week, the state cabinet scrapped its crop insurance scheme which charged farmers only Re 1 to enrol, after the detection of 5.9 lakh bogus applicants. But officials also say the volume of applicants shot up after the scheme began in March 2023, making it difficult to monitor irregularities. In one year, the number of applicants doubled to over 2 crore.
Within two years, the farm-land insured had risen 53 times and rejected cases had increased 50-fold, data shows.

In 2022, the number of applicants was just 1 crore. Once the scheme was introduced in 2023-24, the number of applicants doubled to 2.4 crore in just one year. By 2024-25, the number of farmers who opted for the scheme, were 2.2 crore.
The rise is even more dramatic when one looks at the rabi crop which is a minor crop in the state. In 2022, 7.5 lakh rabi farmers opted for crop insurance. But by 2023-24, as many as 71.8 lakh rabi farmers had opted for the Re 1 crop insurance scheme.
The area of farm-land insured rose from just 11,399 hectares in 2022-23 to 6 lakh hectares in 2024-25, after the introduction of the scheme.
The state offers the Prime Minister’s Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY). But in 2023, it decided to reduce the premium paid by farmers to Re 1. Under the Central scheme, the farmer is charged 1.5% of the sum insured for kharif crops, 2% for rabi crops and 5% for horticulture crops. The government will now revert to the Centre’s premium charges for farmers.
“Since the scheme was offered at Re 1, a very large number of farmers put in their applications. By 2024, a state inquiry found irregularities at the level of the Common Service Centres set up nationally to aid in the delivery of government schemes. Bogus applications were passed by over 96 CSCs,” said a senior official. The total bogus applications came to 5.9 lakh.
The inquiry found cases where the applicants for crop insurance were from other states. Or the land insured was not farmland but belonged to places of worship, was non-agricultural land or even government land.
“The CSCs receive an honorarium of Rs 40 per application and it looks like they were trying to increase the number of applicants in order to earn higher honorarium,” said a senior official.