Hyderabad: Demanding the state government to amend the guidelines in GO No 567 issued for crop loan waiver scheme, and to extend the scheme to cover all the farmers who have debt up to Rs 2 lakh, CPM state secretary Tammineni Veerabhadram has cautioned that if the scheme is implemented in its present form, tens of lakhs of farmers will be left ineligible.
Observing that ration cards were being taken as the basis for identification of farmers who have taken loans, he pointed out that 10 lakh farmers’ households which have become nuclear families, have applied for ration cards and have been waiting for a decade.
He stated that mapping the Aadhar card, pattadar passbook and ration card would also leave lakhs out of the scheme, as some haven’t been issued passbooks because of Dharani portal issues.
He also found fault with exempting self-help groups, joint-liability groups, and those having Rythu Mitra and loan eligibility cards, mostly tenant farmers, will be left out.
Reminding that in the rural areas self-help group women spend their loan amount mostly on agriculture, Veerabhadram underlined that most of these poor farmers are SCs, STs and BCs.
He also found fault with the clause in the GO which denies loan waiver for loans rescheduled as a result of natural disasters. Along with those loans, he felt that all renewed and recovered loans should also be waived off.
He has opined that asking the farmers to pay the loan amounts in excess of the Rs 2 lakh ceiling before getting their loan waived was majorly going to affect medium farmers adversely.
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