Former Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition Bhupinder Singh Hooda said the BJP-JJP government is acting like protectors of scammers and big scams are being carried out by cheating farmers in the name of FPO and crop insurance schemes. He said scam worth hundreds of crores in the name of FPO is the latest example of this.
Commenting on the FPO scam, Hooda said hundreds of crores were looted from farmers first in the name of paddy and market purchase, then in the name of crop insurance and compensation. “Now another scam of the government has come to light. To grab crores of Rupees from farmers, fake FPOs were created in the name of fake farmers. The money which should have been used for the upliftment of farmers, went straight into the pockets of scammers. The 85% subsidy given by the government on drip irrigation to the farmers, went to the farmers,” he said.
“Farmers neither received equity grant nor subsidy. The scam took place on such a large scale in the entire state that the matter reached the Central Government. But BJP-JJP left no stone unturned to mislead the central government. In the name of CID investigation, the entire scam was white-washed and the culprits were saved. The Central Government itself did not trust the investigation of the State Government, and asked the CBI to investigate the entire matter,”’ he added.
Hooda said the coalition government had earlier been cheating farmers in the name of crop insurance scheme every season. “The coffers of private insurance companies are being filled by looting farmers through PM Crop Insurance Scheme,” he said.
“The central government itself had told in the Parliament in the month of July that in the last 7 years, private insurance companies collected insurance premium of 1,97,657 crore across the country. In return, the companies gave compensation of only 1,40,036 crore. That means they made a huge profit of 57,000 crore. In Haryana, AIC Company took a premium of Rs 703.84 crore in the year 2022-23, but only gave a compensation of Rs 7.46 crore.
That means 99 percent of the amount went into the company’s coffers,” he pointed out.
Hooda stated that crops of about 3 lakh farmers in seven districts of the state were not insured this time. “The deadline for taking insurance has also passed on 31st December. The farmers have been left to rely on God. Farmers of Ambala, Karnal, Sonipat, Hisar, Jind, Mahendragarh and Gurugram districts of Cluster-2 have been deprived of insurance,” he said.
“In such a situation, if there is any loss to the crops of mustard, wheat, barley and sunflower, there will be no one to compensate for it. Last time, even for the Kharif crop, there was no insurance company for this cluster. Whereas premium amount was deducted from the accounts of about 2 lakh farmers upto July 2023,” he said.
Hooda said that farmers have also complained to him about discrimination in compensation allocation. “Farmers say that the government provides compensation to its favorite few farmers, while most of the farmers remain dependent on the agencies and the government. This entire matter should also be investigated at a high level. Also, the government should compensate the farmers of Cluster-2 at its own level and immediately pay all the compensation outstanding till now,” he added.