Hyderabad: Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) senior leader T Harish Rao wrote an open letter to Telangana chief minister A Revanth Reddy demanding him to immediately deliver on farm loan waiver of Rs 2 lakhs as per the Congress party’s promise in the 2023 Assembly polls.
“The Congress promised to fulfill farm loan waiver of Rs 2 lakh rupees immediately after coming to power on December 9. You asked farmers who received a loan waiver of Rs 1 lakh during the BRS rule to go to the banks again to take a loan of Rs 2 lakhs. Trusting your words, lakhs of farmers went to the banks and took farm loans. But the loan waiver on December 9 didn’t happen. It’s been 4 months now since you came to power but not even one farmer’s loan has been waived,” he said.
The former finance minister further said that the banks are issuing notices to farmers and are pressuring them to repay the loans.
“Hundreds of farmers have received bank notices in erstwhile Warangal and Medak districts. They are in deep distress. The interest on these loans is piling up leading to a huge financial burden on them. The banks are listing farmers in the defaulters list and their CIBIL rating is dropping down drastically. Due to this, farmers are not able to avail loans for their kids’ education and other requirements….,” he stated.
Highlighting the waiver of Rs 1 lakh twice under the BRS regime, he said that the banks didn’t place any pressure on the farmers are the loans were issued based on a pre-commitment made by the BRS government to the banks.
“Due to this, the loans were directly paid off from the government treasury. Lakhs of farmers got the waiver without any difficulties. However, the Congress government didn’t issue any clarity regarding the framework and since there is no mention of the promise in the state budget, chaos is underway in the state. The government has not clarified the matter either to bankers or the farmers and it didn’t issue orders to the banks to not pressurise the farmers,” he added.
Rao further demanded that Congress should immediately fulfill all the promises it made to the farming community including a Rs 500 bonus per quintal on MSP price, Rs 15000 crop support per acre, water for irrigation, and 24*7 quality electricity supply free of cost.
