Maharashtra govt allows offline crop registration for farmers facing survey app glitches

Mumbai, Nov 7 (PTI) Around 70 lakh farmers in Maharashtra facing technical glitches with the Centre’s Digital Crop Survey mobile app can now register their crops offline via the e-ferfar system, an official said on Saturday.

    Following directions from Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule, the state revenue department on Friday issued a Government Resolution (GR) permitting talathi-level crop inspections in places where online registration is pending for the ongoing Kharif season.

    According to the GR, the state introduced the e-crop inspection system on August 15, 2021, enabling farmers to register crop details through their mobile phones. The process aims to make crop registration accessible and transparent.

    The state government introduced technical changes in the application from December 1, 2024, to facilitate crop registration through the AgriStack platform.

    However, the Digital Crop Survey application has faced problems during the ongoing Kharif season, making online registration difficult in some areas.

    The GR listed four issues affecting the process, including instances wherein the mobile application shows a distance of more than 20 metres between the actual field and the field boundary displayed on the application, despite the farmer being physically present.

    It also cited instances of interchanged maps in the application, the absence of maps for entire villages and the unavailability of names and land account numbers of farmers in the application.

    The government said that in cases where online registration remains impossible despite attempts to resolve these technical issues, crop registration through the e-ferfar system would be permitted as an alternative for the ongoing Kharif season.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)