The State Cabinet headed by Chief Minister Hemant Soren today approved Rs 2,000 crore for execution of ‘Jharkhand Farm Loan Waiver Scheme’ launched for the Financial Year 2020-2021. With the step more than 7 lakh farmers of the State will be benefitted by paying a token money of Re 1.
In the meeting of the Council of Ministers, it has been confirmed that on behalf of the government, the Department of Agriculture will waive up to Rs 50,000 for about seven lakh farmers of the State. For this, the government has approved to give Rs 2000 crores to the department. This relief is going to be given to all the rayyat and non-rayyat farmers in the State.
This amount from the department will go directly through DBT to the accounts of those farmers who have taken loans from agricultural banks till 31 March 2020. It has been agreed to waive the loan of one member of every farmer family. For this, only one rupee service fee will be charged from the farmer.
Cabinet Secretary Ajay Kumar Singh said on Wednesday that currently there are accounts of about 12.98 lakh farmers in Jharkhand. On which, there is an outstanding loan of about 5800 crores. But of these, about nine lakh accounts are currently active. In these nine lakh accounts, about seven lakh farmers can get the benefit of loan waiver.
In another decision of the Cabinet the crop insurance will now be paid to the farmers of the State, not only from the insurance companies, but also from the State government. Every year, the amount that was paid to the insurance companies was not distributed by the insurance companies. In 2016, the government paid Rs 153 crore to the insurance companies, but the company paid only Rs 29 crore among the farmers. Similarly, in 2017, out of Rs 114 crores, Rs 36 crores and in 2018, Rs 225 crores, only 13 crores were paid. Therefore, the government has decided that the loss of crop will be compensated by the Department of Agriculture.
The Cabinet has also decided to remove96 posts of Jharkhand Administrative Service and decrease it to 1460 from 1517. As many as 39 new posts have been added to these, while the old have been removed.
For lac farming, a plan has been prepared to increase the income of 12 lakh families to Rs 5200 annually with the collective efforts of the Forest Department and Rural Development Department.