Ranchi: Agriculture Minister Badal said that one hundred smart villages will be built in the state of Jharkhand, which will be recommended by the MLAs and MPs.
Addressing a press conference here he said that all these smart villages will be developed under the One Umbrella Policy, where all the schemes related to agriculture will be implemented as well as the development framework will be prepared by forming cooperative societies at various levels.
Badal said that the outline of Smart Village is being prepared and soon the Agriculture Department will write letters to all the MLAs and MPs for village selection. He said that even during the Covid period, while achieving good progress in agriculture, the growth rate of agriculture has increased by 26 percent which is a pleasant message for the state.
The Minister informed that the target of the State Government is to ensure that the share of agriculture in the state’s GDP is 20 percent, which is currently 14 percent. He informed that this time 53 lakh 22000 metric tonnes of paddy has been produced. To empower the farmers, an amount of Rs 13.13 crores has been given through KCC. A meeting will be held with the banks to ensure that all the farming families of the state can get loan from the bank and by organizing Birsa KCC loan fair at the block level, loan facility will be made available to the farmers.
He informed that loans of 3.86 lakh Birsa farmers have been waived off. The target was set to waive the loans of 9 lakh farmers, but due to the laxity of the banks, the data of the farmers could not be made available. For loan waiver of all farmers, a meeting will be held with the Deputy Commissioners of all the districts and pressure will be exerted on the banks to provide the data, he said. Badal informed that a total of 82 new schemes are being launched in the budget of 2022-23, in which 57 are state government schemes while 25 schemes are of the Government of India.
Last year, a financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh was given to 500 LAMPS and PACS of the state and this year a campaign will be launched to make one person from each family an active member in LAMPS/ PACS. Along with this, 58 lakh Birsa farmer families of the state will be given unique identity and they will be provided seeds and agricultural machinery under the schemes.
The Minister informed that a cooperative would be formed for milk and 50 percent amount would be provided to the cooperative as a grant. He said that the dairy plants at Palamu Sahibganj and Deoghar’s Sarath are almost ready, they will be commissioned soon.