Govt mulling farm loan waiver based on beneficiaries’ incomes

Hyderabad: The State government is mulling to put a cap on extending the benefit of the farm loan waiver up to Rs 2 lakh to beneficiaries based on their income levels. Ministers, MPs, MLAs, MLCs and other elected people’s representatives in local bodies and the State and the Central government employees and IT taxpayers are likely to be excluded from the beneficiaries’ list.

In view of the huge financial requirement to implement the waiver scheme, the government has reportedly decided to extend its benefit to poor farmers. Sources said that Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy is committed to implementing the scheme by August 15 this year and waive farm loans of all poor farmers. He has convened a Cabinet meeting in a week to finalise the modalities for the scheme.

The scheme implementing agency, the Agriculture department, has found that a considerable number of farmers who took loans up to Rs 2 lakh were financially well-off. Some were drawing huge salaries as government employees; a few were filing IT returns. The Union government was providing financial assistance of Rs 6,000 every year to all eligible farmers as part of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM Kisan) scheme.