No more loan waiver for farmers, says Pranab

“We have no such (farm loan waiver) scheme,” he told newspersons here after an interactive session with the heads of regional rural banks.

The Congress-led UPA government last year had come out with an ambitious farm loan waiver scheme amounting to about Rs 71,000 crore to offer relief to small and medium farmers as they were unable to access fresh loans due to the non-payment of dues.

Mukherjee’s sharp “no” to further rounds of agricultural loan waiver scheme came in response to a pertinent query as to whether the government was considering writing off loans taken by the small and marginal farmers as it did last year in view of impending drought.

“In case there is drought-like situation... we will take care of farmers’ interests,” he said.