69% of claims filed by farmers for DSR incentive found fake in Haryana

The Haryana Agriculture Department has found the claims of about 69% of the areas sown under the Direct Seeding of Rice (DSR) technique by the farmers as "unauthentic" during the physical verification process in the state.

Sources said farmers in Haryana had registered a total of 5,06,814.73 acres of paddy sown by DSR technique on the online portal of the Agriculture Department. Haryana has a total 30,20,000 acres under paddy in kharif 2024.

Rs 70.37 cr given in 2023

In 2023, Rs 70.37 crore was given as incentive to farmers for sowing paddy with DSR technique on 1,75,933 acres; For this season in 2024, the process was on to ascertain the amount for 1,56,891.37 acres.

Over 42,000 acres not verified

Officials have informed that 42,036.78 acres of paddy could not verified as the harvest season is over and farmers have prepared the land for sowing of rabi crops.

Farmers get an incentive of Rs 4,000 per acre for adopting this technique which requires less water for sowing as compared to the transplanting of seedlings in the flooded field. The state government introduced a first-of-its-kind initiative in 2021 in the paddy growing districts as it requires about 20 per cent less water in the paddy which otherwise is a water-guzzling crop.

The department asked the farmers to upload the details of the area sown under the DSR technique on its web portal to claim for the incentive amount. Of about 30 lakh acres of the paddy area, about 17 per cent (5,06,814.73 acres) was claimed to have been sown by this method. The physical verification by the department found that only 31 per cent (1,56,891.37 acres) of the area of 5,06,814.73 acres had actually adopted the DSR method.

Dr Rajbir Singh, deputy Director of Agriculture, Hisar, said they had submitted the report of the physical verification of the paddy sown through DSR to the head office.