Ranchi: Agriculture is one of the key priority areas of the government of Jharkhand. Chief Minister Hemant Soren at different events has said that the state government is committed to empowering the farmers of Jharkhand. Given this, Kisan Credit Cards (KCC) are being provided to the farmers to ensure ease in agricultural work. Farmers deprived of Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman NidhiYojana are also being covered under Kisan Credit Card Scheme. For this, the Chief Minister has issued special instructions which direct banks to issue KCC to the farmers.
Relief to the farmers of Jharkhand
The government aims at providing relief to the farmers from the heavy interest laid charged by the local moneylenders. Through KCC, loans for agriculture work are being provided at an affordable interest rate. To ensure maximum benefit for the farmers, Krishak Mitra, Jan Sevak, Assistant Technology Manager (ATM), and the Block Technology Manager (BTM) have been given the target of connecting farmers with KCC. After the directions from the Chief Minister, more than 5,65,651 KCC applications were received between 01 July 2021 to 31 July 2021 and more than 60,787 KCC cards were issued to the beneficiaries.
Apart from the above, after the directions from the government of Jharkhand, the agriculture loan of farmers was also waived off. More than 1,22,238 farmers have benefited from the scheme and an amount of Rs 600 crore has been spent by the government for the loan waiver scheme.
The government is striving to connect maximum beneficiaries under KCC. In the year 2016-17, 5,57,933 KCC was issued, 3,16,218 cards in 2017-18, 1,55,953 cards in the year 2018-19 and 5,01,527 KCC in the year 2019-20 whereas more than 8,67,609 KCCs were issued in the year 2020-21.
Target of covering 5 Lakh New farmers under this scheme
The Chief Minister has directed to cover farmers from the SC-ST community, landless farmers under the KCC scheme on a priority basis. It is believed that this will benefit almost 5 Lakh new farmers of Jharkhand. Given this, the department has received more than 5,75,761 applications to be registered under the KCC scheme of July 2021.
So far, 30,93,087 farmers have registered under KCC across the state. As per the record of 2020-21, there are 13 Lakh active accounts under the Kisan Credit Card scheme. Out of these 82,421 accounts have been freshly opened in the current financial year.
Leading districts
As per the instructions of the Chief Minister, to maximize the number of beneficiaries, an intensive campaign was on increasing the number of KCC applications by organizing camps in all the districts.
Palamu, Pakur, Gumla and Godda districts are leading in terms of the number of beneficiaries covered in the district whereas Bokaro, Gumla, Ramgarh and Palamu districts are leading in terms of percentage of farmers covered out of the total number of farmers in the district under the scheme.
The government aims to connect more and more farmers under this scheme so that they can buy the necessary equipment, fertilizers, seeds and fulfil other requirements of farming.
“As per the instructions of the Chief Minister, KCC is being issued to provide relief to farmers in the agricultural activities. Camps to generate awareness and encourage farmers to get registered under KCC are being organized across all the districts. Work is being done to provide benefits to all the eligible farmers of the state.” Said Nisha Oraon, Director, Agriculture
