Chennai:
With the Centre giving the nod to her government’s proposal, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Saturday said the National Crop Insurance Programme, proposed by the previous UPA regime, will not be implemented in the state this year.
The Centre has acceded to the state government’s demand for implementing the earlier National Agriculture Insurance Scheme (NAIS), she said.
The Chief Minister recalled her letter to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in January this year, arguing against Centre’s NCIP, saying its provisions would further burden her state’s farmers who were already affected due to natural calamities.
She had expressed doubts in her letter to Singh if farmers would come forward to insure their crops due to high premium costs in NCIP.
In a statement here, Jayalalithaa said the UPA government had ‘abruptly’ ended NAIS without consulting states and rolled out NCIP in November last year.
“The previous coalition government introduced the useless (NCIP) scheme to reduce its contribution during crop failures,” she said.With farmers taking up with her the need to continue with NAIS, her government had sent a proposal to the Centre which had allowed Tamil Nadu to stick to NAIS this year alone, she said.
The NAIS will cover Samba rice crop and others in the Rabi season in 2014, she added.
