Crop loan waiver not yet over as banks deal with glitches

The ambitious crop loan waiver scheme implemented by the previous Congress-JD(S) coalition may be a closed chapter for Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa, but not for banks.

Faced with a slew of issues, including technical glitches, banks have turned to the government seeking resolution. In several cases, banks are unable to upload details of farmers who have been left out of the scheme.

Till date, the government has paid Rs 14,753 crore towards 25.65 lakh loan accounts.

Top lenders such as SBI, Canara Bank, e-Syndicate Bank, Bank of India, Karnataka Gramin Bank among others are yet to upload data on eligible loan accounts on the Crop Loan Waiver Scheme (CLWS) portal. But the banks have told the government that the portal is unable to authenticate the Aadhaar, ration card and land details provided by farmers despite them being valid documents.

According to data made public by the government, a total of 10.53 lakh loans were eligible for the waiver. of which 9.42 lakh have received the benefit, which is a coverage of about 89%.

The waiver covered loans between April 2009 and December 2017. It involved crediting Rs 25,000 into the accounts of farmers with regular loans (incentive) and up to Rs 2 lakh in all other loan accounts, including non-performing assets (NPA).

The scheme was designed in such a way that farmers having outstanding loans in commercial banks and cooperative banks would have only their cooperative loan waived. But in several cases, the CLWS portal is wrongly classifying eligible farmers as ineligible, according to banks.

Because of this confusion on farmers’ eligibility, banks like SBI, Axis, ICICI, Corporation Bank and others have returned the waiver amount as the particular farmer was found to be eligible only for an incentive. Likewise, the incentive amount was returned in several cases as the farmer was eligible for a waiver.

There are technical glitches, too, with the CLWS portal, with banks complaining that their officials are unable to login or make updates. In the case of Krishna Bheema Samrudhi Local Area Bank, the date of account opening was either not picked up or was incorrectly recorded by the portal in 92 cases - the date was shown as 01.01.1900.

Also, Karnataka Bank has said that it was yet to receive the CLWS amount for 3,725 accounts.

All these issues came up for discussion during the recent State Level Bankers’ Committee meeting, where the government assured resolution.