Hyderabad: Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday announced the state government’s decision to resume the farmer loan waiver programme from August 3, Thursday.
KCR on the occasion said that the Telangana farmers’ welfare and agriculture development is the main objective of the state government. “Despite facing many challenges, the government is committed to the welfare of the farmers,” the chief minister said.
Attacking the BJP-led centre, he said that due to the ‘economic slowdown’ caused by the centre’s decision of demonetization, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the state economy and the ‘vindictive attitude’ adopted by the centre towards Telangana state by not releasing the FRBM funds etc, which contributed to the state fiscal deficit, are the main reasons for the delay in the implementation of farm loan waiver scheme.
He made the remarks during a high-level review meeting at Pragati Bhavan on the steps to be taken to restart the farmer loan waiver scheme.
State Finance minister T Harish Rao, chief advisor to the chief minister Somesh Kumar, Special chief secretary to finance Ramakrishna Rao, HMDA principal secretary Arvind Kumar and agriculture secretary Raghunandan Rao participated in this review meeting.
KCR further said that, after the already waived loans, it required another Rs 19,000 crore for the waiver of pending farm loans. He ordered the finance minister and Secretary Ramakrishna Rao to resume this programme from tomorrow ( Thursday , August 3).
He gave clear instructions to complete the farmer loan waiver programme by September second week on the lines of Rythu Bandhu benefit deposited in the farmers’ bank accounts directly in a phased manner.
