47,000 farmers set to be freed from farm loan burden today
Sunday, 07/01/2018
https://dailypost.in/news/punjab/47000-farmers-farm-loan-burden/
Chandigarh – Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh willon Sunday formally launch the farm debt waiver scheme, which will benefit a total of 5.63 lakh farmers in the initial phase. Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, Additional Chief Secretary, Co-operation, DP Reddy and Additional Chief Secretary, Development, Viswajeet Khanna said the government has already identified 5.63 lakh farmers, who had taken loan of nearly Rs 2,700 crore from cooperative institutions as on 31.03.2017, as beneficiaries for disbursement of the debt waiver certificates in the first of the four planned phases for completion of the entire process.
“Of these, the process of verification has been completed for 3.20 lakh farmers. As many as 1.60 lakh cases with loans to worth Rs 748 crore have been approved across Punjab. The symbolic launch event at Mansa will witness disbursement of debt relief certificates to the tune of Rs 167.39 crore to nearly 47,000 eligible marginal and small farmers, who had taken loans from 701 Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies of the five districts of Mansa, Bathinda, Faridkot, Muktsar and Moga,” they said.
“For eligible farmers who did not have Aadhaar cards or, in the case of mismatch of Aadhaar card seeding either with banks or revenue records, verification would be done manually for their inclusion in the scheme in the second phase,” Reddy added. After the completion of the second phase, the record of small farmers would be duly verified to enable them for debt relief. Thereafter, if any eligible farmer is left out during any of the earlier three phases for some reason, he would be considered for re-verification to bring him within the ambit of scheme. 47,000 farmers set to be freed from farm loan burden todayKhanna said that loans of farmers taken from commercial and private banks would be settled thereafter under the Debt Relief Scheme-2017 already notified by the state, whereby marginal farmers having land holdings less than 2.5 acres and small farmers having land less than 5 acres, who have taken loan up to Rs 2 lakh, would be provided debt relief. Khanna also clarified that wherever marginal farmers had availed loans from multiple banks, they shall be further eligible for debt relief for loans taken from commercial banks. This would be in addition to the relief being provided against loans taken from cooperative banks. The total relief shall, however, be limited to Rs 2 lakh.
