Loan waiver burden cut by weeding fakes

Special software developed to identify and weed out multiple beneficiaries

The financial burden on the state government visa-vis the crop loan waiver scheme has come down largely due to elimination of wrong claimants, via cross-checkings with the Aadhaar linkage, the pattadar passbooks and ration cards of farmers.

The second phase of crop loan waiver started across the state on Monday.

The government could easily detect multiple loan-takers in a single family due to Aadhaar linkage and remove them from the list of beneficiaries as per the crop loan waiver scheme norm of 'one family-one beneficiary'.

Official sources in the agriculture department said that they have used a special software to identify and weed out multiple beneficiaries in a single family by cross-checking the details on Aadhaar and pattadar passbooks based on their surnames, relation (husband/ wife/ son/ daughter) etc.

In some cases, same persons obtaining loans in multiple banks were identified and excluded from the beneficiaries’ list.

This weeding out process has resulted in a savings of nearly `4,000crore to the state government in the first and second phases of crop loan waiver.

Over 10 lakh multiple loan takers were identified and removed from the list of beneficiaries.

Chief Minister Chandrashekar Rao had promised to waive crop loans up to `1 lakh each during the 2018 December Assembly polls if the TRS was elected back to power. The TRS retained power. At that time, it was estimated that the scheme required `25,000 crore to waive the crop loans of 36.8 lakh farmers.

After realising that it would be difficult to sanction `25,000 crore in one go, the Chief Minister decided to implement the scheme in four phases — that is to waive loans up to

`25,000 in first phase, up to

`50,000 in second phase, up to `75,000 in third phase and up to `1 lakh in the fourth phase.

Last year, loans up to

`25,000 were waived. The government released

`1,200 crore to waive loans of 6 lakh farmers. But, due to Aadhaar linkage, the software detected that only 2.96 lakh farmers were eligible for this, for whom an amount of only

`438 was required. The

OVER 10 lakh multiple loan takers were identified and removed from the list of beneficiaries.

government could save `712 crore.

Over 10.12 lakh farmers took loans between `25,001 and `50,000 — for the waiver of which `5,225 crore was required. But the Aadhaar linkage detected that only 6.06 lakh farmers were eligible to get the waiver, and for this, an amount of only `2,006 crore was required.

The government started crediting the amount in the bank accounts of farmers in the second phase from Monday to waive loans up to `50,000.