SRINAGAR: Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo, today chaired a meeting to review the implementation of the flagship Holistic Agriculture Development Programme (HADP) here in the Union Territory.
Among others, the meeting was attended by the Principal Secretary, APD, VC SKUAST J/K, MD, HADP, Deputy Commissioners, HoDs in APD, representatives from J&K Bank besides other concerned officers while Jammu-based officers participated online.
The meeting had a detailed discussion on the status of applications by the farmers in different districts, their skilling through the Daksh Kisan portal, extension of credit to farmers by financial institutions and project-wise updates reflecting their progress over a period of time.
Regarding the overall progress of this programme, the Chief Secretary expressed satisfaction while advising for infusing professional technical support and observing enhanced inter-departmental cooperation for the smooth implementation of this ambitious project. He lauded the department for resolving most of the bottlenecks and maintained that it is now time to ensure expected outcomes are reaped on the ground. He exhorted upon the Deputy Commissioners to lead the teams in their districts to create ample awareness besides accomplishing the targets without fail.
The Chief Secretary asked the officers to work to substantially raise the number of applications with a corresponding increase in the percentage of approvals. “It may not be impractical to aspire that at least 15-20% of farmers should register themselves in one of the dozens of attractive activities being offered under HADP,” he maintained.
As far as the role of Agricultural Universities is concerned, the Chief Secretary enjoined upon them to come up with requisite solutions through research, timely advice, technical expertise and extension for maximization of benefits out of this holistic programme.
Regarding the skilling of registered farmers on the Daksh Kisan Portal, Dulloo stressed on creation of quality video content by the concerned faculty members of our farm Universities. He also asked them to upload as many demonstration videos as required for all the newly identified courses under this development programme.
The Chief Secretary laid emphasis on the import of materials like high-density rootstock from Denmark and bulls and Sheep from Australia and New Zealand for enhancing the quality of breeds in the UT. He called it a key towards revolutionising these sectors along with total replication of seeds in Agriculture.
Dulloo also took stock of progress on the establishment of Spice Park at Kishtwar, acquiring of NMR technology for honey testing, handholding of FPOs, creation of baseline survey, promotion of organic farming, vermicomposting, coverage of Artificial Insemination, training of Maitris, capacity building of manpower and introduction of modern technology for large scale development of agriculture in J&K.
In his address, Principal Secretary of the Agriculture Production Department, Shailendra Kumar, pointed out a few of the issues faced in the implementation of this programme. He also suggested certain measures to be taken for its smooth implementation and the roadmap for making the process more result-oriented for times to come.
Mission Director, HADP, Yasha Mudgal, in a presentation, threw light on the overall performance of this holistic development programme along with activity-wise progress registered during the previous and current financial years.
The presentation also highlighted the district-wise, monthly trends followed in its implementation besides giving insights into the achievements and targets achieved under each of the activities separately.
It was revealed that the progress in registration and approval rate of applications has seen a significant increase since March this year. It was informed that the registrations have increased to 1,14,075 which is 34% more, applications received are 1,60,955 enhanced by 45% and approvals by 47% reaching 89,411 since then.
Besides, steps to improve the creditworthiness of applications were depicted which included improvement in the quality of DPRs, mentioning of project cost, CAPEX subsidy and subvention scheme availability during approval by CIO and a regular follow-up with bank/branch by concerned FLO/DIO.
During the meeting, the district-wise ranking for the month of May was released. The criteria adopted for ranking comprises of scale of applications, their pendency, approval rates and the proportion of farmers skilled by imparting training on the Daksh Kisan Portal.
Among the districts, Shopian has been ranked first followed by Pulwama at second and Bandipora at third place. The other districts in order of merit are Ganderbal at 4th, Budgam 5th, Kulgam 6th, Anantnag, Udhampur, Reasi and Kathua at 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th place respectively.
The bottom 10 districts included Poonch at 11th position followed by Kishtwar, Kupwara, Jammu, Baramulla, Ramban, Srinagar, and Samba with Doda at 19th and Rajouri at the bottom of the ranking table.
