Telangana: Tummala Slams BRS for Denying Loan Waivers to 20.84 Lakh Farmers

 Hyderabad: Agriculture minister Tummala Nageswara Rao on Friday chided the BRS for “spreading lies and creating unrest among the farmers” on the crop loan waiver scheme, and questioned the scheme that as implemented during the previous BRS government tenure.

Nageswara Rao pointed out that the loan waiver in 2018 was done by the previous BRS government by considering the family as a unit. “Was the ration card not taken as the basis for that,” he asked, responding to the BRS’ allegations.

He said the BRS government had denied crop waiver for 20.84 lakh farmers. “The BRS regime did not bother to send the Rs 1,419 crore, which came back to the exchequer owing to mistakes in information regarding 2.26 lakh farmers, again.”

Taking objection to the BRS argument that 31 reasons were being cited for denying loan waiver, the minister said unlike the BRS regime efforts are being made to correct the mistakes in data. He said the government had collected the details of 2.65 lakh farmers as part of the family identification process which was underway.

Nageswara Rao said the government had spent Rs 26,140.13 crore for the welfare of farmers in its nine month tenure. Pending payments for rabi Rythu Bandhu, subsidy for seeds, aid for promoting palm oil farmers and subsidy for drip irrigation were made.