Ashish Kumar Bhutani appointed CEO of PMFBY

Government has appointed senior bureaucrat Ashish Kumar Bhutani as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY).

He has been appointed to the post till May 2020.
He is an IAS officer (1992 batch) of Assam-Meghalaya cadre.

About the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY):

It is a farmers' welfare scheme launched in 2016 to ensure faster insurance services or reliefs to farmers.
It was formulated in line with One Nation–One Scheme theme by replacing earlier two schemes National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) and Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) by incorporating their best features and removing their inherent drawbacks (shortcomings).
It aims to reduce the premium burden on farmers and ensure early settlement of crop assurance claim for the full insured sum.

Objectives:

Provide insurance coverage and financial support to farmers in events of natural calamities, pests & diseases.
Stabilise income of farmers to ensure their continuance in farming.
Ensure flow of credit to the agriculture sector.
Encourage farmers to adopt innovative and modern agricultural practices.

Beneficiaries:

All farmers growing notified crops in notified area during the season who have insurable interest in crop are eligible under this scheme.
It also provides insurance benefits to Landless labourers.
It is compulsory for loanee farmers availing crop loans for notified crops in notified areas and voluntary for non-loanee farmers.

Salient features of the Scheme:

Under this scheme, farmers need to pay a uniform premium of only 2% for all Kharif crops and 1.5% for all Rabi crops.
In case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, farmers have to pay a premium of only 5%.
The premium rates to be paid by farmers are very low and balance premium will be paid by Government.
Moreover, there is no upper limit on Government subsidy, so farmers will get claim against full sum insured without any reduction.
It covers yield losses due to non-preventable risks, such as natural fire and lightning, storm, stailstorm, cyclone, typhoon, tempest, hurricane, tornado.
It also covers risks due to flood, inundation and landslide, drought, dry spells, pests and diseases.
It also covers post-harvest losses.
Under this scheme, it mandates for use of technology such as smart phones, drones etc to capture and upload data of crop cutting to reduce delays in claim payment to farmers.
Remote sensing will be also used to reduce number of crop cutting experiments.
The scheme is implemented on an Area Approach basis.
In this case, defined area (i.e. unit area of insurance) is village or above and it can be a geo-mapped and geo-fenced region having homogenous risk profile for notified crop.

Questions:

Q1. Which senior bureaucrat has been appointed by the Government as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY)?
a. Ashish Kumar Bhutani
b. Arvind Kumar Bhutani
c. Alok Kumar Bhutani
d. Arun Kumar Bhutani

Q2. When was the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) launched?
a. 2014
b. 2015
c. 2016
d. 2017