Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy has assured a group of farmers from Kandukuru village of Vemsoor mandal in Khammam district that he would take up their problem of facing injustice in the settlement of crop insurance claims pertaining to 2015.
The farmers led by Sathupalli legislator S. Venkata Veeraiah met the Minister here on Friday and explained their problem to him. They stated that they, 511 farmers in all, had paid crop insurance premium of ₹1,07,85,697 through Kandukuru branch of Andhra Bank to the Agriculture Insurance Company of India in 2015.
Alleging that the insurance company had done grave injustice to them, the farmers stated that while the other banks, from which some other farmers had availed crop loans and paid crop insurance premium, had settled crop insurance claims at 76.85% of the loss suffered (crop damage value insured) by the insurance company. But, the farmers who had paid the premium through Andhra Bank were given only 3.74% of the loss suffered in March 2016.
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The officials of the insurance company had been attributing the low claim settlement to a discrepancy in documentation by the bank officials concerned, wherein Vemsoor village was mentioned instead of Kandukuru. However, the bank officials had stated that they had mentioned the village name correctly as Kandukuru.
After listening to their problem, the Minister assured the farmers of examining and resolving it with the help of the insurance company and bank officials.