SANGAREDDY: Alleged negligence by bankers has led to about 15,000 farmers in the erstwhile Medak district not being eligible for the recently announced loan waiver.
Officials said this problem arose because the loans taken by farmers in 2016 were not renewed in 2017 and 2018. Like the Primary Co-operative Societies functioning under the District Cooperative Central Bank, some Primary Cooperative Societies (seeded societies) also functioned under the State Bank of Hyderabad (SBH).
Until 2016, the SBH had a dedicated department for providing loans to farmers and recovering them. However, in March 2017, all SBH branches were merged into the State Bank of India (SBI), and the authorities ignored the issue of farmers’ loans, sources said.
As a result, farmers could not renew their loans in 2017 and 2018. As the state government imposed a cut-off date of December 2018, seeded society farmers who had taken loans before then lost their eligibility for a loan waiver. Farmers complained that the full responsibility lies with the SBI officials.
District Cooperative Officer (DCO) Prasad said that only a few seeded society farmers renewed their crop loans, so they are getting the loan waiver. He added that even after the merger with SBI, if the process of granting and renewing loans to seeded society farmers had continued as usual, this problem would not have arisen. The DCO said that only eight farmers in the Nandi Kandi Society in Sangareddy district became eligible for waiving off their loans up to Rs 1 lakh.
Officials said that due to the non-renewal of farmers’ loans by SBI officials, about 8,000 farmers in Sangareddy district alone did not get a loan waiver. Around 3,188 farmers in the Sangareddy division have taken Rs 19 crore of loans from SBI. The officials added that under the Narayankhed division, about 2,000 farmers have taken Rs 12 crore in crop loans.
Officials said that even the loan waiver by the previous government did not apply to most of the farmers in the seeded societies. Apart from Sangareddy, many farmers in Siddipet and Medak districts have not received loan waivers.