HYDERABAD: The Telangan Cabinet Sub-Committee on farm loan waiver met for the third time at MCR HRD Institute here on Saturday and discussed ways to eliminate bogus beneficiaries from claiming crop loan waiver.
After the meeting, Agriculture Minister Pocharam Srinivas Reddy said that the government was very keen that the loan waiver scheme should cover only genuine beneficiaries. It has already been decided to include those who took crop loans by pledging gold under loan waiver. But those who pledged gold for loans for use other than for agriculture purpose would not be waived.
The committee, according to sources, also discussed as to how to identify multiple loans in a family borrowed by different branches of a bank since the crop loan waiver is available for one loan up to ` 1 lakh per family. Srinivas Reddy said that there was no need to doubt the sincerity of the government in providing loan waiver to farmers. “The fact that we are discussing the issue at length proves that we are very serious about it,” Finance Minister Etela Rajender said.
Both the ministers said that at present they were getting information about how many farmers had taken loans for raising crops and how much. “Once we get this, we will finalise the beneficiary list and cover them under loan waiver scheme,” Srinivas Reddy said.
According to the latest estimates, the Telangana government may have to garner ` 16,000 crore to implement the waiver as against the earlier figure of `18,000 crore. The burden has come down partly after RBI agreed to let the banks reschedule loans in three districts in Telangana - Adilabad, Rangareddy and Medak.