No Farmer will Lose Loan Waiver: Uttam

Hyderabad: No farmer’s family will be left behind when it comes to the Rs.2 lakh agricultural loan waiver scheme, and the campaign that the Congress government was not implementing it to all farmer families was a desperate gambit by Opposition parties to sow confusion among farmers, irrigation minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy declared on Monday.

Addressing a press conference along with tourism minister Jupally Krishna Rao, and Congress party legislators, Reddy said that any farmer who claims that the loan waiver scheme was not applied to his family, is being taken seriously, being verified and such claims will be honoured without fail once the facts are ascertained.

He also said that so far Rs.17,933.19 crore were disbursed to banks and deposited into accounts of 22 lakh farmers. This is out of the Rs.31,000 crore for the purpose approved by the Cabinet. Of this, the government had set aside Rs.26,000 in the Budget towards loan waiver, he added.

“We appeal to farmers not to believe claims being made by the BRS leaders. Our government is committed to your welfare. The BRS government gave Rs.26,000 crore towards its Rs.1 lakh loan waiver in 10 years. Most of these amounts went towards adjusting the accumulated interests on the loans and very little was translated into actual loan waiver,” he said.

The BRS, he said, has a habit of cheating farmers. It did so when it was in power, and is continuing to do so even when it is out of power, he added.

In contrast, the minister said, the Congress government has also addressed the issue of interest on the loans up to Rs.2 lakh, which too is covered under the waiver scheme.

Uttam Kumar Reddy explained that reasons for the cases where farmers had not received the waiver were varied, and included issues related to incorrect Aadhaar numbers, different names on bank accounts and on Aadhaar cards, errors in bank accounts or bank details, and families that did not have ration cards.

“Every mandal agriculture officer has been instructed to verify each claim of pending waiver, and reconcile the data. Once this is done, the waiver to such accounts will go through within 24 hours,” Uttam Kumar Reddy said.

Krishna Rao said that BRS leaders K.T. Rama Rao and T. Harish Rao were throwing meaningless challenges to escape from their own failures during their party’s rule and not keeping promises made to farmers.