Crop loans of over 2 lakh farmers yet to be waived

The crop loans of several farmers are yet to be waived as promised during the tenure of H D Kumaraswamy led coalition government.

As part of the scheme, the government waived loans up to Rs 1 lakh borrowed from cooperative banks.

As on date, there are 18.32 lakh farmers in the records of co-operative institutions. The state government identified 16.01 lakh farmers for the loan waiver. Of this, the government has been able to reach 15.70 lakh farmers, and a cumulative amount of Rs 7,257.40 crore has been transferred through NEFT to their savings accounts, Cooperation Minister S T Somashekar told the Legislative Assembly on Friday.

The minister was responding to a question by Congress's Shivananda Patil, who sought to know the amount owed by the government to the District Co-Operative Central (DCC) banks and reasons for the delay.

To this, Somashekar blamed some technical issues. Elaborating, he explained that Rs 176.82 crore had come back to the Karnataka State Co-Operative Apex Bank as DCC banks made errors with the bank account numbers. The government was in the process of setting this right, he added.

As for the case of the remaining 2.30 lakh farmers, as many as 70,497 of them have provided valid documents and funds will be released soon, the minister said. In the rest of the cases, their eligibility is yet to be determined.

Assembly Speaker Vishweshwar Hegde Kageri asked the minister to expedite the process. "In Uttara Kannada alone, about 10,000 beneficiaries are yet to get the loan waiver amount. Not that they are not eligible, but their waiver has not come through on technical grounds," he said.

Leader of the Opposition Siddaramaiah too asked the government to relax certain parameters and disburse the waived amount to the beneficiaries at the earliest.