Pulls up govt on loan waiver

Hyderabad: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has pulled up the Telangana government for its failure to adhere to the guidelines set for the implementation of crop loan waiver scheme for the farmers. The CAG highlighted several lapses including lack of proper verification of beneficiaries under the scheme.

It may be recalled here that farmers were eligible for wavier of crop loan up to Rs 1 lakh per family that was outstanding as on March 31, 2014.

The scheme guidelines stipulated verification of beneficiaries based on Aadhaar card numbers. But no such measures had been taken and no social audit was conducted to eliminate duplicate and multiple financing of the beneficiaries.

Finding fault with the Agriculture department, the CAG pointed out that the verification was not carried out to check whether the farmers had taken crop loans on agriculture lands in multiple banks.

Against the scheme guidelines crop loans to Rythu Mitra and Rythu Mitra Sangams were waived off. What was more astonishing was some banks had claimed excess interest of Rs 183.98 crore on the total outstanding crop loan of beneficiaries.

And, some of the banks did not claim interest, though stipulated in the scheme guidelines. This had resulted in eligible farmers being deprived of wavier of interest to an extent of Rs 66.16 crore, the report pointed out.

Delayed reconciliation of accounts related to the scheme left the unspent money sanctioned under the scheme to languish in the accounts of the banks and the Joint Directors of Agriculture department, the report said.