Crop loans of all eligible farmers to be waived, says Telangana minister

Hyderabad, Aug  (IANS) Telangana's Agriculture Minister Tummana Nageswara Rao on Tuesday reiterated that the state government is committed to waiving crop loans of up to Rs 2 lakh of all eligible farmers.

A day after opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) launched a helpline number for farmers who have not received the loan waiver amounts and accused the Congress government of selectively implementing the scheme, the minister said farmers who have not yet received the money need not worry.

Stating that loan waiver money was not credited to the bank accounts of 30,000 farmers due to technical problems, he said loans of all eligible farmers would be waived by plugging the loopholes.

Stressing that the Congress government is waiving off the crop loans as per its Warangal declaration, Nageswara Rao said despite difficulties, the government was going ahead to fulfil its promise. He alleged that the opposition parties were making baseless allegations against the government. He claimed that the previous BRS government planned to implement the farm loan waiver by selling away Outer Ring Road (ORR) for Rs 7,000 crore. He also said farmers feel that crop loan waiver was not implemented properly in the past.

"They failed to properly implement crop loan waiver but are now criticising the Congress government. They are trying to use farmers for political mileage,” he said.

The minister said loans taken by farmers during the last five years were being waived.

"Even if the farmers don’t have passbooks, the government is waiving their loans on the basis of white ration cards,” he said.

Nageswara Rao said the Congress government was implementing farm loan waiver in three phases.

The third phase to waive farm loans of more than Rs.1.50 lakh and up to Rs.2 lakh will be launched by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy on August 15 at Wyra in Khammam district.

On July 30, the Chief Minister launched the second phase of the scheme, under which crop loans between Rs 1 and Rs 1.5 lakh are being waived.

For the second phase, Rs 6,198 crore is being deposited in the bank accounts of 6.4 lakh farmers. Under the second phase, crop loans of up to Rs.1 lakh were waived. The Chief Minister said under the first phase, Rs 6,035 crore were deposited in the bank accounts of 11.34 lakh farmers.

In both the first and second phases, the loans of 17.75 lakh farmers have been waived. For this, the government spent Rs 12,225 crore. The government will be spending a total of Rs 31,000 crore on crop loan waiver in three phases. The final phase will be completed by August 31. He claimed no state in independent India has so far waived farmers' loans on such a large scale.

The Congress announced the Farmers’ Declaration for waiver of farm loans on May 6, 2022, in Warangal.