HYDERABAD: The main Opposition BRS and the ruling Congress are back at each other’s throats over the promised crop loan waiver.
As part of his party’s strategy to raise farmers’ issues, BRS MLA and former minister T Harish Rao on Friday demanded that the government complete the loan waiver implementation by Dasara. If this is not done, he would march to the Secretariat along with lakhs of farmers and stage a protest, Harish warned.
This is not the first time Harish has thrown a challenge on the loan waiver. He had, in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, challenged Chief A Revanth Reddy to either complete the loan waiver process or resign from his post. Harish offered to quit as MLA if the waiver was completed by August 15. Now, the opposition leader is once again baiting the chief minister with a fresh challenge, piquing the interest of state political circles.
The ruling Congress waived farm loans up to Rs 2 lakh, releasing Rs 18,000 crore for its implementation. However, the BRS alleges that the government failed to waive loans of all farmers. The pink party says that only about 40% of the farmers in the state benefited from the scheme. The BRS has been demanding that the loan waiver scheme should be implemented without conditions and for all farmers in the state.
The BRS also accuses the chief minister, ministers and other senior leaders of issuing contradictory statements on the scheme. It takes every opportunity to remind the public that the chief minister himself had said that Rs 40,000 crore would be needed to implement the loan waiver scheme and that the government allocated only Rs 21,000 crore in the Budget and released only Rs 18,000 crore. The BRS has been questioning the Congress how it could claim to have implemented the scheme when the amount released was less than half of the amount required, as quoted by the chief minister.
Ministers from the Congress have been saying that loans above the promised Rs 2 lakh cut off would also be waived in the coming months. However, the BRS continues to criticise these claims, saying that these are nothing but “conditions” like excluding farmers without ration cards or those who are government employees from the scheme. The BRS says that these “unfulfillable” conditions have deprived a majority of the farmers of loan waiver.
In response, TPCC president B Mahesh Kumar Goud has reminded Harish that the Congress government has already implemented the waiver by releasing Rs 18,000 crore, as promised. He demanded that Harish fulfil his promise of resigning as MLA. Mahesh also questioned why Harish remained silent over the loans taken by farmers during the BRS’s decade-long rule.
Political analysts believe that the BRS focus on the loan waiver issue is a strategic move, especially with local body elections approaching. The BRS is positioning itself as the champion of farmer interests while also leveraging the Kaleshwaram irrigation project to contrast their approach with the Congress’s handling of water resources, they said.
Meanwhile, political circles await a response from the CM to Harish’s latest challenge.