Lagatar24 Desk
Ranchi: During a felicitation event organized on the eve of International Day of Indigenous people, Chief Minister Hemant Soren announced to accord farmers of the state as ‘BirsaKisan’ and cover them under all eligible schemes run by the state government. As per instructions from the Chief Minister, the Agriculture Department is trying to usher in a new era and bring more and more poor farmers under agriculture schemes. The Agriculture Department has started giving a concrete shape to the task of identifying about 58 lakh farmers of Jharkhand as ‘BirsaKisan’.
Unique ID for all the BirsaKisan
Under BirsaKisan, the farmers from across the state will be registered with a unique ID. This unique ID will be attached to the Aadhar card, mobile number and savings account number to benefit farmers under Direct Benefit Transfer. E-KYC of all the farmers will be done at PragyaKendras to ensure that only authentic farmers with Aadhar numbers are registered. Additionally, the landholding details of the farmers will be retrieved through a common interface of the Land & Revenue department.
Identification of farmers through bar code
The unique ID card issued to the farmers will consist of a bar code and will be used for the identification of farmers. This number will be used by the District Agriculture Officers and others to help the farmers avail benefits under various schemes like seed distribution, agricultural equipment distribution, etc. The barcode will store the information about the benefits given to the farmers under various schemes. This information will also be uploaded and stored separately on a server.
Targeted to benefit genuine beneficiaries
The vision of BirsaKisan will provide the benefit of multiple schemes to genuine poor farmers by identifying middlemen and fake complainants. Before giving the benefit of the scheme to the farmers, it will be checked by the DAO whether the farmer has received the same benefit in the current or previous years. In the process, it is aimed to create a database of farmers. The database will be utilized to identify and include new beneficiaries every year, thereby preventing duplication and ensuring the identification of bogus ones.
Work will be done in a phased manner
In the first phase, the department will check the database to mark duplication and other anomalies. In the second phase, the database will be used to check for duplication of beneficiaries under different departments of the government and Agriculture Department. In the third phase, beneficiary duplication between government and non-government agencies will be cross-checked. Additionally, the unique identification number will be used for digitization of the land details of the farmers, type of crop produced by the farmers, total production etc. After the launch of the unique ID of the farmers, the Agriculture Department will share the data and software with all other directorates.
“BirsaKisan is aimed at providing benefits to the farmers of the state. As per the vision of the Chief Minister to empower farmers of the state, the department is working on collecting all the desired information to create a database. Also, the farmers will be given a unique ID by the government, which will help us monitor and cover every eligible beneficiary under different schemes. The government is striving to boost the state’s agriculture economy and to achieve that we are committed to empowering our farmers,” said Nisha Oraon, Director, Agriculture.
