PMFBY Crop Insurance Claim Not Paid? Do These Five Things First

Reviewed on: 2026-06-12.

Your crop insurance claim under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana has not reached your bank account. The scheme runs through three bodies, the bank, the insurer, and the State agriculture department, so the claim can stall at any one of them. Five actions sort out where it is stuck.

1. Check the status on pmfby.gov.in and call the farmer helpline. Use your application number to see whether a claim was even generated, and what it says: enrolled, claim generated, paid, rejected, or under process. Take screenshots.
2. Pull your premium debit proof. Get the bank statement showing the farmer premium debit and its date. If the premium never reached the insurer, that is a bank problem, not an insurer one.
3. Write to the assigned insurance company. Ask in writing for the claim calculation, the yield used, and the reason for non-payment. The portal or your enrolment slip names the insurer for your district that season.
4. Write to your Block or District Agriculture Officer. Ask for the crop-cutting-experiment (CCE) yield data and the threshold yield for your insurance unit, plus the loss-assessment status.
5. File an RTI for the yield, assessment and payment records with the agriculture department PIO, and with a public-sector bank if it handled your premium.

A PMFBY claim involves three bodies, and naming the right one saves weeks.

• The bank or common service centre enrols you and handles the premium. If the premium did not reach the insurer, or the bank account on record is wrong, the claim cannot credit. That is a bank issue.
• The State agriculture department notifies the crop and area, runs the crop-cutting experiments, and finalises the yield. If the yield figure is the problem, that is an agriculture department issue.
• The insurance company calculates and credits the claim from the yield data. If the yield is settled but no claim was paid, that is mainly an insurer issue.

For most notified crops, the claim depends on a shortfall between the threshold yield for your insurance unit, often a village or panchayat, and the actual yield measured by crop-cutting experiments that season. If the average unit yield did not fall below the threshold, the formula can produce a low or even zero claim, even though your own field was badly damaged. This is why you must ask for the unit yield data and the threshold before concluding the claim was wrongly denied. Localised and individual losses, such as hailstorm, inundation, landslide, or cloudburst, are assessed differently, on your specific field, but they usually need quick intimation through the helpline, the app, the bank, or the agriculture office, within the window in the scheme guidelines.

Balwinder, a non-loanee farmer in Bathinda district, Punjab, enrolled 3 acres of cotton for kharif 2025 and paid a farmer premium of Rs 1,950, debited on 28 July. Pink bollworm and late rain hit his field. He intimated the loss on the helpline on 6 October and got a ticket number. By February 2026 nothing had credited, and the portal showed “under process” with no figure.

He wrote to the assigned insurer asking for the claim calculation, and to the District Agriculture Officer asking for the CCE yield and threshold for his unit. When neither replied in a month, he filed an RTI with the agriculture department PIO for the unit's crop-cutting yield data, the threshold yield, the individual loss-assessment report for his survey number, and the claim status. The RTI reply showed the unit yield had crossed the threshold for the area-based cover, so the area claim was nil, but his individually intimated loss had been recorded and was pending insurer assessment. Armed with the ticket and the RTI reply, he pushed the individual claim through the District Level Monitoring Committee, and the field-level assessment paid out. The numbers, not a fresh complaint, moved the file.

To: [Grievance Officer, (Insurer)] / [Block / District Agriculture Officer]

Subject: Non-payment of PMFBY claim, Application No. [number], [Kharif/Rabi]
[year], [crop]

I am enrolled under PMFBY for [kharif/rabi] [year] for [crop] on survey/khasra
no. [number], [village], [block], [district], [state]. My farmer premium of
Rs [amount] was debited from account [number] on [date]. I reported the crop
loss on [date] via [helpline/app/bank/office], reference [number].

No claim has been credited to account [number] as of [date]. The portal shows
status [status].

Please:
1. Confirm whether a claim was generated, the amount, and the account it went to.
2. Provide the claim calculation, the yield used, and the threshold yield for
my insurance unit.
3. Provide the loss-assessment report for my reported loss (individual claim).
4. State the reason for non-payment and the expected settlement date.

Enclosures: enrolment proof, premium debit, land record, loss-intimation proof,
dated photos. Kindly issue a dated acknowledgement.

[Name, mobile, address, date]

PMFBY is a government scheme. The State agriculture department, the district and block agriculture offices, and a public-sector implementing bank are public authorities under the RTI Act. File an RTI with the agriculture department PIO for the crop-cutting-experiment yield and the threshold yield for your unit and season, the loss-assessment report for your survey number, the claim calculation, and the payment status. If a public-sector bank debited your premium, RTI it for the enrolment record and proof it remitted your premium to the insurer. The figures that decide your claim, the unit yield and the threshold, are usually not shared with you automatically, so RTI is the cleanest way to get them. See how to file RTI online and first appeals if the department is silent. A purely private insurer is not under RTI, so use the grievance route for the insurer's own conduct.

1. PMFBY portal and farmer helpline: confirm whether a claim exists and where it is.
2. Assigned insurer: written grievance for the calculation and the reason.
3. Block or District Agriculture Officer: for the yield and loss-assessment data.
4. District Collector or District Level Monitoring Committee: when the insurer and office do not respond.
5. State PMFBY nodal officer: for systemic or unit-wide delays.
6. RTI to the agriculture department or PSU bank: for the official figures.

• Assuming the whole scheme failed when only your field was hit. The claim usually rides on the unit average, not your single field.
• Missing the intimation window for a localised or individual loss. Report it at once and keep the reference.
• Not keeping the premium debit and enrolment proof, so every body passes the blame on.
• Complaining to only one body when the claim can stall at the bank, the office, or the insurer.
• Filing an RTI against a private insurer instead of routing it to the agriculture department or PSU bank.
• Leaving a wrong or dormant bank account on the enrolment, so an approved claim cannot credit.
• Giving up after a vague “rejected”. Ask, in writing and by RTI, for the yield and the calculation.

The bank that debited the premium is responsible for enrolling you correctly and remitting the premium to the insurer. Get the debit statement, ask the branch in writing for the enrolment proof and the insurer it was sent to, and raise the same on the PMFBY grievance route. If it is a public-sector bank, RTI its enrolment and remittance records.

Ask the agriculture department for the CCE yield and the threshold yield for your unit, and ask the insurer for the full claim calculation. The shortfall formula and the sum insured per hectare explain the figure. If the yield was wrongly recorded, take that up with the department.

For loanee farmers the bank usually enrols you against your crop loan and debits the premium. Confirm the bank actually did so for the right crop and season, because an unremitted or wrongly mapped enrolment is a common reason a loanee claim never appears.

Add-on perils vary by State notification and the policy for that season. Some States notify wild-animal attack or post-harvest losses as covered. Check the season's notification and the scheme guidelines, and intimate any such loss individually and quickly.

The guidelines set timelines for yield submission and settlement, but the actual time varies by State, season, and how fast the crop-cutting data is finalised. If you are well past a reasonable window, escalate through the grievance route and the District Collector, and file an RTI for the claim status to create a dated record.

For the insurer's conduct you can use its grievance cell and the IRDAI route, and a consumer forum is open for deficiency in service. But remember the core dispute often turns on government-held yield data, so the agriculture department and RTI usually resolve more than a forum can without those figures.

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Download the PMFBY crop claim checklist (PDF).