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The Centre has decided to raise Rs 6,000 crore to provide interest-free loans to farmers so that they do not have to go to moneylenders and fall into debt traps, Union Minister Ramvilas Paswan today said.
Under the proposed farm loan disbursal mechanism, the farmers will get loan without paying interest which will be borne by the central government, the Union Food and Consumer Affairs Minister said here.
Paswan was addressing a press conference to showcase the NDA government’s achievements in its one year in office.
Defending the controversial Land Acquisition Bill, he said the proposed legislation was a boon for the people.
The landowners and the people at large stood to gain from the bill as those selling the land will get payment four times more than its market value and the land will be put to use for setting up industrial units for generating employment, he said.
On absence of a consent clause in the bill, he said it was not a new thing as the bill passed during the UPA rule too did not have such a provision.
Rubbishing the allegation of the Narendra Modi-government being ‘anti-poor’ and ‘pro-corporate’, he said pro-poor schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, Jan Dhan Yojana, Mudra Bank and Atal Pension Yojana were launched for the poor people of the country.
The prices of essential goods like rice, wheat and sugar were also under control, the Union Minister said.
While the rate of pulses and edible oil has seen sharp increase of late, efforts will be made to check hike of prices of the two commodities by importing them, he said.
On the charge that minorities were under constant attack from the majority ever since the NDA government came to power last year, he said “no communal riots have been reported in the country and the minorities feel safer than ever.”
Non-NDA parties were using communal card to attack the NDA government, he added.
He said the NDA government has also succeeded in reining in price rise and inflation during its first year in office in addition to providing a corruption-free and transparent governance and taking steady steps to bring back black money from foreign shores.
On Centre-State relations, he said the government believed in ‘cooperative federalism’ and it accepted the 14th Finance Commission’s recommendation to raise the states’ share to 42 per cent of taxes under divisible pool as against 32 per cent earlier.
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