Moving a step closer to waive off the farmers’ loan taken from the nationalized banks, Punjab Government has received the list of such farmers.
Even as the last date to submit the list of farmers who have taken loan from the nationalized banks was set as April 30, many banks are yet to furnish the same to the government. For the same, the Government has now decided to extend the last date of submitting the list to May 25.
The Congress-led Punjab Government is targeting to roll-out the scheme by October 31, this year.
To procure the list of such farmers from these banks, the Finance Department had been holding meetings with the State level Bankers’ Committee (SlBC). “Once the data is in place, the loan amount would be released to these banks, and the farmers’ debt would be waived off,” a senior government official told The Pioneer.
Till date, the government has provided Rs 999.97 lakhs debt relief to 2.02 lakh marginal farmers of cooperative institutions under the scheme notified on October 17, 2017. The State Government has all along been claiming to complete the entire process of farm loan relief to the total of 10.25 lakh “identified” farmers before November this year.
For the same, the Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh has directed the officials of concerned departments to hold Tehsil-level functions, after organizing state-level and district-level events, to expedite relief disbursement among the beneficiaries identified for waiver of loans from the cooperative banks.
Chief Minister has already announced that the next phase of the debt waiver scheme would cover the farmers who had availed crop loan from public sector banks and other commercial banks.
SlBC convener PS Chauhan said that many nationalized banks have handed over the list of farmers to the government whose debts are to be waived off. “But still, there are some banks which are yet to provide the lists of farmers and their debt to the government,” he added.
The SlBC meeting was held on Friday which also discussed the implementation of crop insurance scheme. It was held that the crop insurance scheme should be implemented in Punjab as the farmers suffer a huge loss running into crores due to fire in their standing crops.
It was informed that the scheme could not be implemented in Punjab in past two years.
Defending the state government, the Agriculture Department officials maintained that the Centre’s crop insurance scheme is not beneficial for the farmers of Punjab as it can be implemented only if entire village crops are destroyed due to flood or fire.
The officials submitted that the scheme should be implemented by considering one acre as one unit.