Govt to write off ₹1,771-cr loans of 1-lakh farmers

PATIALA: The Punjab government to set to start the second phase of its farmer debt waiver scheme from December 7 by writing off ₹1,771 crore loan to 1,09,730 farmers, after having done much spadework to get data from commercial banks about credit availed by marginal farmers.

On December 7, chief minister Amarinder Singh will kickstart the second phase at Patiala, where farmers from Fatehgarh Sahib, Rupnagar, Ludhiana and Patiala districts will be given waiver certificates.

A total of ₹10,000 crore debt is to be waived in four phases of the scheme.

Nearly 3 lakh marginal farmers who got loans from the state cooperative bank were waived ₹1,700 crore in the first stage of the scheme.

In the third phase, small farmers having more than 2.5 acres but less than five acres will get loan waiver up to ₹2 lakh each they have borrowed taken from cooperative banks and cooperative societies.

In the last phase, Small farmers get waiver from the commercial banks.

“We have prepared a list of beneficiaries in the second phase of the waiver,” said Kahan Singh Pannu, secretary, agriculture department, which

is nodal agency for the waiver scheme.

Earlier, the waiver programme had hit a hurdle with the departments concerned finding it difficult to verify whether the marginal farmers who got loans from commercial banks have also borrowed from the state cooperative bank as the information sharing process is complex and slow.

Besides, it is also challenging to sift marginal farmers who have borrowed from both the state cooperative bank and commercial banks.

There are 5,415 commercial bank branches in Punjab, and the department had to crosscheck information available with every bank.

Complete debt waiver was one of main poll planks of the Congress in the run-up to the 2017 assembly polls.

But after coming to power, the Congress government citing huge debt on the state capped the waiver at₹2 lakh and that only to small and marginal farmers.

Later, the government had removed names of income taxpayers and government employees from waiver beneficiaries.

By clearing nearly ₹10,000 crore loans, the government is aiming to provide relief to 10 lakh farmers.

To fund the loan waiver, the state government is raising loans by pledging the receipts of the rural development board.