1,985 claims from a village, officials say portal hacked

CHANDIGARH Uploading of 1,985 claims by farmers of Nathu Majra village in Sangrur for not burning paddy stubble came as a shock to the agriculture, revenue and cooperation departments who are dealing with the disbursal of ₹100 per quintal to small and marginal farmers.

Officials say it is not possible to have so many cases from a single village, so processing of these cases was put on hold, and it was found that portal on which cases are uploaded was hacked.

Last week, the Supreme Court asked the Punjab government to compensate farmers who have not burnt paddy and have adopted other methods to manage it.

“As per the standard operating procedure for disbursal of financial support, block development officers (BDO) are to upload claims sent by the village sarpanch and verified by panchayat secretary. I don’t know how these cases came up,” Sangrur revenue officer Gagandeep Singh said.

“I am trying to find out how it happened, and make sure only genuine claimants get the (financial) support,” he added.

Prabhjot Singh, husband of Nathu Majra sarpanch Ranjit Kaur, said the village doesn’t have so many farmers. “There are ten to twelve land units where stubble was not burnt and so far we have not uploaded the cases,” he added.

MANDI BOARD TO FOOT THE BILL

The Mandi board is paying for the financial support ordered by the apex court. So far, the board has released Rs 200 crore to the agriculture department, which is transferring the benefit directly into the accounts of the farmers.

By Friday, the state government paid Rs 19.09 crore to 29,343 farmers. A total of 62,499 claims were received on the portal. The maximum number of cases were received from Amritsar (10,849), followed by Kapurthala (10,545) and Hoshiarpur (8,483).

The state government filed a status report in the apex court on Friday.