New Year gift: KCR to waive farm loans up to ₹1 lakh

Hyderabad: As part of its efforts to woo farmers ahead of the elections in line with the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) campaign slogan Ab ki baar kisan sarkar, the Telangana government, led by Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao, plans to offer farmers a New Year's gift in January —waiver of agricultural loans of up to Rs 1 lakh, which has been pending since the 2018 Assembly polls.

While the government waived loans up to Rs 25,000 in the first phase in 2020 and up to Rs 50,000 in the second phase in 2021, the CM has decided to waive loans up to Rs 75,000 and up to Rs 1 lakh in two phases beginning in January. Farmers will receive cheques from the government rather than direct cash deposits into their bank accounts this time.

In August 2021, the Cabinet chaired by Rao decided to waive crop loans up to Rs 50,000 that were credited to farmers' accounts between August 15 and August 31. During the 2018 December Assembly elections, the CM promised to waive crop loans up to Rs 1 lakh if re-elected.

The TRS retained power. It was projected at the time that the scheme would require Rs 25,000 crore to waive the crop loans of 36.8 lakh farmers. After realising that it would be difficult to sanction the sum at one go, the CM decided to implement the scheme in four phases.

The government spent Rs 408 crore to waive crop loans of up to Rs 25,000, which covered 2.96 lakh farmers. In the second phase, the government paid Rs 4,900 crore to waive crop loans of nearly 6.06 lakh farmers who had borrowed up to Rs 50,000.

The financial burden on the state government as a result of the agricultural loan waiver scheme has been reduced significantly, owing to the elimination of bogus claimants through cross-checkings with Aadhaar linkage, pattadar passbooks, and ration cards.

The government, using a special software, could easily detect multiple loan-takers in a single-family due to Aadhaar linkage and remove them from the list of beneficiaries as per the crop loan waiver scheme norm of 'one family-one beneficiary'.

In certain instances, individuals who had borrowed from multiple banks were identified and removed from the list of beneficiaries. Over 10 lakh multiple loan applicants were indentified and removed from the list of beneficiaries, which saved the state government almost Rs 4,000 crore in the first two phases.