Fishermen's loan waiver money bounces back from 4,000 accounts in Karnataka

Over 4,000 bank accounts to which the state government credited Rs 7.75 crore under a loan waiver scheme were closed or non-operational, authorities have found, prompting them to check, if there were any bogus beneficiaries.

This is the fisheries loan waiver that Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa announced soon after coming to power in 2019. The beneficiaries of this loan waiver are fishermen from Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Uttara Kannada districts.

The loan waiver worth Rs 60.58 crore was to cover nearly 23,000 fishermen. These were loans up to Rs 50,000 that were availed in 2017-18 and 2018-19 at 2% interest under a scheme of the Fisheries department, from commercial and regional banks.

Of the total 22,949 fishermen, the government put 15,099 under the green list, making them eligible to receive the loan waiver benefit. When the Fisheries department started crediting the amount, the money bounced back in the case of 4,050 bank accounts as they were closed, DH has learnt.

“A request has come to us seeking permission to add new accounts into which the loan waiver money can be put,” Department of Personnel & Administrative Reforms (Administrative Reforms) Secretary Munish Moudgil, who heads a special cell of the Crop Loan Waiver Scheme (CLWS), said. The CLWS software is being used to implement the fisheries loan waiver as well.

“The software will be modified to allow field personnel to change the account numbers with respect to the 4,050 bank accounts,” he said.

“For this, we have asked the Fisheries department to give us a signed hard copy of details of each of the accounts. Since this is a financial matter, we want them to certify this to make sure bogus beneficiaries don’t get included.”

Moudgil pointed out that a similar problem surfaced during the implementation of the bigger CLWS announced by the previous Congress-JD(S), which he helmed. “Banks kept asking us to trigger payments for new accounts,” he said.

Loan waiver payments to thousands of farmers remain stuck due to various errors. This was former chief minister H D Kumaraswamy’s pet project - it covered loans between April 2009 and December 2017 and 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).

Till date, a little over 10 lakh farmers have received Rs 7,556 crore in their accounts through commercial banks. Another 17 lakh farmers in the cooperative banks have received Rs 7,982 crore.