10 months on, landless farmers await debt waiver
State cabinet had taken a decision in this regard in February this year; cooperation department yet to provide details of eligible farmers
CHANDIGARH: The debt waiver approved by the Punjab council of ministers for landless farmers in February this year still continues to be an unfulfilled promise.
A sum of Rs 520 crore was initially proposed to be spent on waiving debt of 2.85 lakh landless farmers. The state cooperation department later identified 2.77 lakh eligible beneficiaries whose debt amounting to Rs 507 crore was to be waived.
Officials, seeking anonymity, said the scheme is still awaiting its rollout as the state government is facing dearth of funds.
As per the scheme, a loan of up to Rs 25,000 (along with 7% interest per annum) on landless farmers would be waived off, which they have taken from primary agricultural cooperative societies (PACS), with a cut-off date of March 31, 2017.
In July, the Capt Amarinder Singh government had announced the fall of curtains on its much-hyped farm debt waiver for small and marginal farmers, after covering about 5.5 lakh farmers.
Around 50,000 farmers could not get the benefit owing to some technical glitches and “improper” family division.
Under the scheme, the government has so far paid Rs 4,600 crore in debt waiver and Rs 1,800 crore more would go to the farmers, taking the total outlay of scheme to Rs 6,400 crore.
Regarding the waiver for landless farmers, registrar, cooperative societies, Vikas Garg said, “We are ready with the details and will soon send the lists of beneficiaries to the agriculture department, which would process the cases for disbursal of waiver amount.”
There are 3,300 primary agricultural cooperative societies in the state, of which 1,692 have given debt to landless farmers. “The accounts were to be verified manually from every single PACS, so it took a lot of time,” said Garg, while explaining the delay in the process.
After the rollout of the debt waiver package for small and marginal farmers, landless labourers also demanded a waiver, claiming equal stakes in the state’s agrarian economy.
In its manifesto ahead of the 2017 assembly polls, the Congress had promised a debt waiver to small and marginal farmers only, but not to the landless farmers.
By an estimate, there are 15 lakh landless farmers and all of them are demanding debt waiver.
However, the government said it could waive off only the institutional loans.
WAIVER TO BE ROLLED OUT SOON: MINISTER
Meanwhile, Cooperation minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa said, “The debt waiver for landless farmers will be rolled out soon as there is no dearth of funds.”
In the watered down scheme for the small and marginal farmers, 5.5 lakh farmers were been given the waiver, out of the total 15 lakh farmers in the state.
The waiver was launched in October 2017, seven months after the Congress government came to power.
Earlier, during the run-up to the state polls, the Congress had offered to waive off the entire loan of 15 lakh farmers in the state.
However, the waiver was later confined to small and marginal farmers who own up to 2 hectares of agricultural land, with a capping of Rs 2 lakh.
It was initially planned to cover 10.25 lakh farmers, involving a waiver of Rs 10,000 crore. Later, it was decided to exclude income tax payee farmers and those into public sector jobs.