70 lakh farmers in Maharashtra to be allowed offline crop registration due to application glitches

Approximately 70 lakh farmers in Maharashtra, who have been facing technical glitches in the Central Government's Digital Crop Survey mobile application, will now be able to register their crops offline through the e-Farfar system. An official provided this information on Saturday.

Following the directives of Maharashtra's Revenue Minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule, the state's Revenue Department issued a Government Resolution (GR) on Friday. According to this resolution, permission has been granted to conduct crop inspections at the Talathi level in areas where online registration for the current Kharif season remains pending.

According to a Businessline report, the state government had launched the e-Crop Inspection System on August 15, 2021. The primary objective of this system was to make the process transparent and accessible by providing farmers the facility to register crop details via their mobile phones.

Subsequently, from December 1, 2024, the state government made technical changes to the application to provide crop registration facilities through the AgriStack platform. However, during the current Kharif season, several problems have emerged in the Digital Crop Survey application, making online registration difficult in some areas.

The Government Resolution lists four main technical issues affecting this process. In the first problem, it was observed that even when a farmer is physically present in their field, the mobile application shows a distance of more than 20 metres between the actual field and the field boundary shown in the app.

The second major issue pertains to the swapping of maps in the application, where maps have been interchanged. As a third problem, maps of some entire villages are not available in the application. The fourth issue involves complaints that farmers' names and land account numbers are not available in the application.

The state government has clarified that despite efforts to resolve these technical issues, where online registration remains impossible, permission will be granted to register crops through the e-Farfar system as an alternative for the current Kharif season.