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“Karnataka has been successfully implementing the farm loan waiver scheme and in a most transparent way,” Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy said in his budget speech.
The Chief Minister said that under the Loan Waiver scheme, ₹5,450 crore has been released so far for about 12 lakh loan accounts of commercial banks. Out of this, crop loan amount of ₹1,027 crore for 2 lakh loan accounts of cooperative banks and ₹843 crore for 1.9 lakh loan accounts of commercial banks has been released.
Transparency
“Without giving scope for leakage of taxpayers’ money, loan waiver amount is being released directly to the farmer’s loan accounts and the complete process is transparent like an open book,” he claimed.
Kumaraswamy said that so far 17 lakh farmers have already submitted self declaration certificates in respect of about 20 lakh farm loan accounts of commercial banks and regional rural banks till date. In the same manner, out of 20 lakh accounts, information of 19 lakh accounts has been obtained from the co-operative banks. Other farmers are being contacted through the Revenue Department.
For the commercial banks crop loan waiver scheme announced in July budget 2018, a provision of ₹ 6,500 crore had been made in 2018-19. So far ₹2,850 crore has been released to benefit about 6 lakh farmers. For the co-operative banks crop loan waiver scheme, the entire budget provision of ₹2,600 crore has been released, which will help 5.97 lakh farmers.
In 2019-20, a budget provision of ₹6,500 crore for commercial bank crop loans and ₹6,150 crore for cooperative bank crop loans has been made. The cooperative loan waiver process is scheduled to be completed by June 2019. It is expected that the commercial bank loan waiver will also be completed during the financial year 2019-20.
Plea to Centre
Kumaraswamy said, “We have already represented to the Central government to provide ₹2,434 crore package for kharif crop. The Central government has agreed to give ₹950 crore only. We have again represented to the Central government to provide ₹2,065 crore for the rabi crop and are awaiting their response.”
“Our government has made substantial allocations for the welfare of the farmers of the State. We have kept in mind all the activities relating to agriculture from production to the consumer, in order to make agricultural activity a profitable industry,” he added.
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