Nagaland: Most farmers don’t avail govt. schemes

Our Reporter
Dimapur, March 6 (EMN): There are 1, 97,000 registered farmers in Nagaland but only 34, 226 are Kisan Credit Card (KCC) holders as of January 2020, with a 1, 62,774 gap in KCC coverage.

This was revealed by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) Dimapur office at a press conference held at the Dimapur deputy commissioner’s office on Friday, March 6.

It said that in Dimapur district, 16, 329 farmers are registered and 14, 183 of them are beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme. Nabard along with the district administration has been on a KCC saturation drive for PM-KISAN initiated by the government of India to help farmers get short term loan for crop and animal/fish rearing at a maximum interest of 4% on timely repayment.

Dimapur DC Anoop Khinchi, while addressing the press conference, said the PM-KISAN beneficiaries help farmers with credit limit up to INR 1.6 lakh with KCC, which has been extended to animal husbandry and fishery farmers.

After the GoI launched a drive to saturate all eligible farmers of the country under KCC, all charges including processing, documentation, inspection and ledger folio as well as other service charges for KCC loans up to INR 3 lakh have been waived off by Indian Banks Association to facilitate the scheme, Khinchi updated. He added that banks have been instructed to issue KCC within 14 days of receipt of completed application from farmers.  

Nabard Dimapur assistant general manager HC Biswas said that to ensure ease of application, a simple one-page form has been developed such that basic data would be obtained from the bank’s record under PM KISAN and only a copy of the land record along with details of crop sown would need to be filled in.

Under the scheme, he said, an income support of INR 6000 per year is provided to all farming families across the country in three equal instalments of INR 2000 each every four months.

The district administration and the Nabard have appealed to the farmers to pay loans on time which in return will be beneficial for them. Also, the AGM said the target of the scheme was to cover all the farmers so that they receive KCC and called on the farmers to avail it.