Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Wednesday called  on Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and sought immediate ad hoc release of Rs 1000 crore and one lakh metric tonne of foodgrains to Karnataka as flood relief measure.
Kumaraswamy, accompanied by PWD minister H D Revanna, also urged Pawar to effect changes in the guidelines of the crop insurance scheme as the present ones were not favouring farmers.
On the flood relief front, the chief minister noted that the state government has submitted the second ‘flood memorandum’ to the Centre seeking total aid of Rs 1917.27 crore.  The Centre did send an expert team to the state in July, he noted but added that the state experienced another flood havoc in August. Despite repeated pleas, the Centre has not released any assistance under the NCCF (National calamity contingency fund) to the state so far.
The CM, referring to the crop insurance scheme, noted that farmers  were losing confidence in the scheme of late because of the procedure adopted by the Agriculture Insurance Company (AIC) in calculating the threshold yield while implementing the scheme. He said the AIC was calculating the crop compensation taking into account the previous five years’ yield data to get the threshold yield.
 or the guaranteed yield. This threshold yield included the drought and flood affected years’ yield also. Since  most districts in Karnataka experienced drought or flood for three of the last five years, the average yield obtained was low.
At present, he said, the AIC was calculating the crop compensation amount and releasing the same to the farmers  by considering the flood and drought-hit years also and due to this, the level of threshold yield and normal yield of that particular year becomes narrow and farmers  would not get monetary benefit.  This part of the guideline should change, the chief minister demanded.
Pawar assured that he would consider the twin issues immediately.