Mumbai, Apr 29 (PTI) The Maharashtra government on Tuesday approved a new crop insurance scheme under which farmers will have to pay a premium ranging from 1.5 to 2 per cent of the insured amount, as against the earlier scheme where they had to pay only Rs 1.

Farmers will pay 2 per cent of the insured sum for Kharif crops, 1.5 per cent for Rabi and 5 per cent for cash crops, officials said.

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In 2023, the government came out with a `one rupee crop insurance scheme' under which a farmer was required to pay only Rs 1 as his or her share of premium while the rest was paid by the state government .

But there were complaints regarding this scheme, an official statement said, without specifying what went wrong.

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Notably, several cases where insurance was claimed even without planting a crop had come to light.

The BJP-led government is already facing a heavy financial burden on account of schemes such as the Mukhyamantri Ladki Bahin Yojana under which eligible women are paid Rs 1,500 per month.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)