States Integrate Farmers Data With Central Portal

Out of the 23 procuring states in the country, 20 of them have integrated key data related to farmers like land records and details of digital mandis, with a portal managed by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs. The move has been initiated to ensure that the minimum support price (MSP) for the current kharif season, reaches the farmers instead of “middlemen”.

A food grain procurement portal of the ministry has integrated all such data, called minimum threshold parameters (MTPs) provided by the procuring states. Delhi and Jammu & Kashmir as well as Himachal Pradesh are the two union territories and one state, which are at an advanced stage of integrating their respective data with the procurement portal of the Centre, official sources said.

Consumer Affairs Ministry had asked all procuring states to integrate their MTPs with its food grain procurement portal to ensure that MSP reaches farmers.

The MTPs consist of five important details related to farmers which states had been asked to integrate so that uniformity is maintained on the portal.

Firstly the states had to get farmers registered online with details of their address, contact numbers, bank accounts as well as land records.

Secondly the states had to integrate farmers' details with their own land records portal. After this, states were to integrate digitised mandis and procurement centre operations for generating forms for buyers and sellers.

In the fourth step, states had to put together an online payment infrastructure so that MSP amounts are smoothly transferred to farmers' bank accounts.

Lastly, states were to ensure auto generation of billing after procurement of stock.

The MTP data's integration with the central government portal will ensure real time monitoring of benefits reaching farmers, quantity of crops procured, status of payments made to farmers and the actual stock holding available, apart from other details, a statement issued by the consumer affairs ministry said.

The requirement for data integration was felt as till now there was no pan-India mechanism available to monitor the entire process, official sources informed.