Lucknow: Fulfilling the promise made by the BJP in its manifesto, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, on Tuesday, during his first Cabinet meeting, announced a slew of loan waiver schemes for farmers.
All loans of small and medium farmers up to Rs 1 lakh will be waived off and this will entail a burden of Rs 36,359 crore on the state government.
UP minister Siddhartha Nath Singh said this includes a loan amount of Rs 5,630 crore taken by about additional seven lakh farmers.
The minister said that the cutoff date for the loans would be the end of financial year 2016-2017.
The number of farmers who will benefit from this is around 86 lakhs. There are a total of 2.15 crore medium and small farmers in the state.
If the state government had waived off the aggregate loans of farmers without putting the Rs 1 lakh limit, the financial burden would have been around '62,000 crore.
Though the government spokesman did not say so, sources in the finance department said that the Uttar Pradesh government will either take loan from the Centre or other financial institutions to bear the financial burden.
The state government is already bearing an additional burden of Rs 25,000 crore after implementing the recommendations of the Seventh Pay Commi-ssion.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had stated that the loan waiver for UP farmers would be done in the first cabinet meeting if the BJP came to power.
