Giving a major relief to farmers, Telangana government has issued guidelines for the Crop Loan Waiver-2018 scheme that will be applicable for all crop loans approved or renewed on or after 1st April 2014 and outstanding as on 11th December 2018. The scheme would be applicable for short-term production loans as well as crop loans against gold amounting up to Rs 1 lakh given to farmers in Telangana by commercial banks, cooperative credit institutions that include urban cooperative banks & regional rural banks.
Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao said that fulfilling his electoral promise, crop loans up to Rs 25,000 would be waived off in the 1st stage. For all other eligible farmers, the outstanding loan amount beyond Rs 25,000 & up to Rs 1 lakh would be waived off in 4 installments over a period of next 4 years.
Recently, the state government had allocated Rs 1,198 crore in its 2020-21 budget for the scheme that will be released to waive off outstanding crop loans of below Rs 25,000 for 5.83 lakh farmers. While loans above Rs 25,000 & up to Rs 1 lakh per farmer’s family needs around Rs 24,738 crore, Telangana government had allocated Rs 6,225 crore in the budget under the scheme as first installment. The amount will be distributed to the entire farmer individually via cheques by their respective local legislators.
In the orders that were issued earlier this week, Agriculture Secretary B Janardhan Reddy said that an IT portal will be created for collection, processing of the data & finalization of beneficiaries’ outstanding & eligible loan amounts for extending the benefit. After that, the banks will make a village-wise list of farmers with outstanding loan amounts in a prescribed format & submit it to the authorities concerned. Also a district level bankers committee meeting would be conducted before finalizing the eligible farmers’ list and starting distribution of cheques to eligible farmers.
