Hyderabad: Telangana irrigation minister N Uttam Kumar has assured that the state government is committed to waiving off the outstanding loans of the rest of the farmers which were pending.
The delay in the waiver for a few farmers despite the launch of the third phase was due to various reasons pertaining to Aadhar cards, passbook details, loan accounts or errors in the details given by the bankers, and those with loans exceeding Rs 2 lakh.
Addressing media in Hyderabad on Sunday, Uttam Kumar Reddy fell short of giving a timeline for waiving off the loans of these erroneous cases and assured that their loans will be waived of the very moment their proper documentation was submitted.
| Category of Accounts | Number of Accounts |
| Loan accounts with 11 or 13-digit Aadhaar numbers | 1,20,000 |
| Cases with different names in Aadhaar and loan | 1,61,000 |
| Accounts with errors in details provided by bankers | 1,50,000 |
| Accounts with no ration cards | 4,83,000 |
| Accounts with loans over Rs 2 lakh | 8,00,000 |
In all these cases, Uttam Kumar said that the mandal agricultural officer (MAO) has been given the task of correcting the errors and uploading them in the government portal. In case the beneficiaries do not have ration cards, MAO will be visiting each of the households to identify and ascertain the loanee before waiving off their loans.
In the case of those having more than Rs 2 lakh debt, Uttam Kumar said that such beneficiaries would first have to pay the loan in excess of Rs 2 lakh (for instance those having Rs 2,30,000 loan will have to first pay Rs 30,000), after which state government would waive off their loans up to Rs 2 lakh.
In the case of those who haven’t received their pattadar passbooks due to Dharani-related issues, the MAO will verify, and the benefit of doubt will be the given to the farmer who has availed a loan from the bank for cultivation.
He said that a system for grievance redressal was in place to clear the loan issues, unlike during the BRS government, when in 2018, loans waived off for 2,26,000 accounts to the tune of Rs 1,400 crore had returned to the government, but no steps were taken to clear those loans later.
“We have already cleared 8,000 of these returned accounts. From 2014 to 2018, the BRS government had waived loans in four phases, totaling Rs 16,000 crore. After taking office in 2018, the BRS government did not disburse any funds for the loan waiver until 2021, when it released only Rs 408 crore. In 2022, it released Rs 1,339 crore. It was only two months before the 2023 assembly elections that the BRS government sold the ORR toll collection contract and used the Rs 10,000 crore from that sale to clear loans totaling Rs 10,000 crore,” Uttam stated.
Appealing to the farmers not to believe in the false propaganda of BRS leaders about farm loan waiver of the state government, Uttam has assured that all the loans will be waived off as and when the documentation issues are resolved.
