Farm loan waiver coming soon: CM Revanth giving finishing touches to guidelines

Hyderabad: The prestigious farm loan waiver up to Rs 2 lakh in all likelihood would be launched next week. It is learnt that Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy is giving final touches to the guidelines and modalities prepared by the official committee. It is to be seen whether the government would consider family as a unit or farmer as a unit.

The government had already hinted that the benefit of the scheme would not be given to Income-Tax payers, state and central government employees, rich farmers and public representatives mainly MLAs, MLCs, MPs and Zilla Parishad Chairpersons.

Sources said the guidelines have been carefully worked out to ensure that there was no backlash from the farming community and the Opposition in the implementation of the loan waiver scheme. Since the availability of funds is a big challenge in implementation of the scheme before the August 15 deadline, officials said that Rs 10,000 crore have been mobilised to launch the scheme next week. The proposal to mortgage the premium government lands to mobilise Rs 10,000 crore was under consideration and the officials have been asked to furnish the details of the government lands under the HMDA limits.

The government needs Rs 30,000 crore for the farm loan waiver scheme. The government’s first priority is to benefit the poor farmers and provide them relief from the mounting debt burden. Source said that state Agriculture and Finance departments were collecting the official data of the farmers’ financial condition to waive off their loans. An option to give up the farm loan waiver scheme would also be provided to the farmers who were well off. Farmers who took the loans between December 12, 2018 and December 9, 2023 were eligible to avail the scheme benefit.

The government proposes to implement the scheme in three or four phases as per the availability of the funds and complete it by August 15.