UP Crop Insurance Scam Widens: Over 1.05 Lakh Policies Cancelled Across Districts

Long-simmering faults in Uttar Pradesh’s crop insurance system are now surfacing with unprecedented clarity, as district-level investigations unravel what officials privately describe as a deeply entrenched pattern of organised manipulation. During a statewide verification exercise focused on Kharif 2025 policies, authorities have cancelled 1,05,361 insurance policies deemed ineligible or fraudulent, signalling that the issue extends far beyond isolated administrative lapses.

What began as a district-specific inquiry in Mahoba and Jhansi has now widened to include Lalitpur and Hamirpur, where early findings mirror the same anomalies-insurance coverage issued for land that was never cultivable, never owned by claimants, or never eligible under scheme guidelines. Senior officials concede that the scale of cancellations makes disciplinary action unavoidable, with criminal liability also under consideration where intent and collusion are established.

Preliminary departmental scrutiny shows that insurance policies were approved on riverbeds, barren parcels, railway property, government land and even plots belonging to elected representatives. In several cases, individuals with no cultivation rights successfully claimed compensation, siphoning off public funds through forged land records and manipulated declarations. The uniformity of these patterns across districts has raised uncomfortable questions about how verification checks failed simultaneously at multiple levels.

Mahoba has emerged as the epicentre of the exposure. Investigators there have flagged suspicious claims nearing ₹40 crore, leading to the registration of 59 FIRs across local police stations, with another 10 cases lodged in neighbouring Jhansi. Officials involved in the probe say documentation was systematically fabricated to create the appearance of compliance, suggesting a coordinated effort rather than clerical oversight.

Following these disclosures, the Agriculture Department instructed district magistrates across Uttar Pradesh to re-verify both Kharif and Rabi 2025 policies. The resulting cancellations span dozens of districts-around 10,000 policies in Mahoba, roughly 9,000 in Jhansi, and hundreds more elsewhere. Verification in Hamirpur and Lalitpur is still ongoing, and officials expect the final tally to rise once field-level checks are completed.

The financial backdrop underscores the seriousness of the breach. Over recent seasons, tens of lakhs of farmers have been enrolled under crop insurance schemes, with premiums and payouts running into hundreds of crores of rupees. Against this scale, the discovery of widespread fake and ineligible policies has sharply eroded confidence in the integrity of the system and the safeguards meant to protect public funds.

Officials now acknowledge that technology alone cannot substitute for accountability. While the crop insurance schemes operate through a central digital portal, gaps between land records, farmer registries and bank-linked approvals created space for manipulation. The Agriculture Department has proposed structural fixes, including automatic land classification, mandatory landowner alerts, and tighter integration of revenue records-measures aimed at preventing approvals based on falsified inputs.

Experts note that without independent verification and controls comparable to those emphasised in auditing services in india, even well-designed welfare platforms remain vulnerable to coordinated abuse. The current crisis, they argue, is less about technology failure and more about the absence of rigorous oversight across the administrative chain.

Director of Agricultural Statistics and Crop Insurance Sumita Singh has confirmed that as district reports are finalised, insurance companies are cancelling fraudulent policies on the NCIP portal. Officials say action will not be limited to beneficiaries alone; officers found negligent or complicit will also face departmental and criminal proceedings.

As the investigation widens, the unfolding picture suggests that restoring credibility to the crop insurance framework will require more than software upgrades. It will demand sustained accountability, transparent verification, and consequences that extend all the way up the decision-making hierarchy.