Cabinet to tweak farm loan waiver modalities

Hyderabad: Senior officials from the Finance and Agriculture departments are burning the midnight oil following Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy's direction that every eligible farmer should benefit from the government scheme. This is likely to be the main agenda before the state Cabinet meeting scheduled to be held on Friday.

This assumes importance as the CM had announced that the farm loan waiver scheme would be implemented by August 15. There are about 47 lakh farmers and each of them has Rs 1 lakh or less debt burden on them, according to government sources. The government needs Rs 35,000 crore to implement the scheme. In addition, the State government had promised to implement the Rythu Bharosa Scheme with the enhanced financial assistance of Rs 15,000, besides bringing the tenant farmers under its preview. Following this, the state government is now actively considering the eligibility criteria of Pradhana Mantri Kisan Samman Yojana (PMKSY) as the baseline for the implementation of its two flagship schemes of farm loan waiver and also the Rythu Bharosa. It feels that there will be about 33 lakh farmers eligible if the PMKSY criteria was applied and the State government needs Rs 25,000 crore to implement the farm loan waiver scheme, said a senior official.

Speaking to Hans India, a senior official said keeping in view the earlier loan waiver schemes, a fresh study on the eligibility criteria is being done and decide who can be eliminated from this scheme. The government feels that the scheme should be implemented only for the genuine beneficiaries not institutional landholders, those who are in constitutional posts, former and present ministers, MPs, MLAs and MLCs.

All the serving and retired officials of the Central and state governments, government bodies like corporations and PSUs autonomous bodies, attached offices and autonomous institutions under the government as well as regular employees of the local bodies should not be eligible.

However, multi-tasking staff, class IV and group D employees may be retained in the list of beneficiaries. Retired employees drawing a pension is Rs 10,000 and more and income tax assesses, doctors, engineers, lawyers, chartered accountants, and architects registered with professional bodies will also not eligible, sources add.