PMFBY Update: Crop Insurance to Cover Wild Animal Damage and Paddy Flooding from Kharif 2026
19 November 2025, New Delhi: The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare has approved new provisions under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) to extend crop loss coverage for farmers. The Ministry has formally recognised the modalities for covering losses caused by wild animal attacks and paddy inundation under the scheme.
Wild animal attack has been included as the fifth Add-on Cover within the Localised Risk category. States will list the animals responsible for crop damage and identify vulnerable districts or insurance units using historical records. Farmers must report losses within 72 hours through the Crop Insurance App and submit geotagged photographs as evidence.
These decisions respond to long-standing requests from several States and aim to strengthen protection for farmers facing sudden and localised crop damage. The modalities follow PMFBY Operational Guidelines and will be implemented nationwide from Kharif 2026.
Farmers across many regions have reported increasing crop losses due to elephants, wild boars, nilgai, deer and monkeys, particularly in areas near forests, wildlife routes and hilly terrain. Such losses were previously outside the scope of crop insurance. Paddy farmers have also faced repeated losses in flood-prone and coastal regions due to inundation during heavy rainfall or overflow of local water sources. Paddy inundation was removed from the localised calamity category in 2018 due to concerns related to assessment and moral hazard, resulting in a coverage gap for affected farmers.
To address these issues, the Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare set up an expert committee. Its recommendations have been approved by the Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Shivraj Singh Chouhan. The updated framework enables timely claim settlement using technology-based verification.
The inclusion of Wild Animal Attack as a cover will support farmers in States reporting frequent human–wildlife conflict, including Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and the Himalayan and North-Eastern States such as Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh.
Reintroducing Paddy Inundation as a Localised Calamity Cover is expected to benefit farmers in coastal and flood-prone States such as Odisha, Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand, where paddy submergence is common. Together, the two additions expand the PMFBY risk coverage framework and aim to reduce crop loss vulnerability for farmers across diverse agro-climatic regions.
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