MP farmers may have to wait for second phase of loan waiver till next financial year

MP farmers may have to wait for second phase of loan waiver till next financial year

Nearly Rs 5,000 cr is required to waive loans of farmers in 15 districts.

Staff ReporterUpdated: Thursday, December 05, 2019, 10:16 PM IST
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BHOPAL: Farmers may have to wait for the second phase of loan waiver till the next financial year. Waiving farmers’ loan was the major promise that the Congress made before coming to power in the state.

The party is going to complete one year in office on December 17, and just after taking over as Chief Minister, Kamal Nath signed the orders for waiving farm loan.

He had waived the loan of 20 lakh farmers before the code of conduct for the Lok Sabha elections came into force. Most of the loans were in the category of NPA in various cooperative banks.

Nevertheless, after the Lok Sabha elections, the government could write off the loans of the farmers of Jhabua only, because of poor fiscal health of the state.

Keeping the by-election on mind, the loan of each farmer in Jhabua was waived, and after that, the finance department has not accepted any loan amount for waiving.

There are still 30 lakh farmers whose loans have to be written off. After a scrutiny of bank accounts, the government has found that there are 19 lakh farmers who have no disputes.

The government which is trying to find out ways to waive the loans of those farmers may not be able to do that in the current financial year. Since the Centre has imposed a curb on relief of GST and since various units have generated less amount of fund, the state finance department can hardly allot such a huge sum to waive loans.

The government has categorized the farmers and will write off loans on the basis of that categorization.

Nearly Rs 5,000 crore will be required to waive the loans of farmers in 15 districts, and the government is getting ready to write off the loans of those farmers.

Former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said the farmers had been caught in the wave of lies. Instead of waiving loans, the government has made the farmers defaulters for their failure to pay the loans, he said. The farmers are paying 14% of interest on loan which they used to get free of interest earlier, Chouhan said. Agriculture minister Sachin Yadav recently said the government had spent Rs 7,000 crore to write off the loans of 21 lakh farmers.

In the second phase of the loan-waiving process, which is beginning soon, the government will write off the loans of 12 lakh farmers.

The government wanted to start the second phase of loan-waiving on October 2, but it could do that because of shortage of funds.

Farmers with more than Rs 2L may get benefit later: Five lakh farmers have borrowed more than Rs 2 lakh, but such cases will be considered later, because the feedback on those farmers indicates that most of them are financially strong.

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