The crop loan waiver planned to be implemented by the State government from this month, as announced in the recent budget presentation in the Assembly, starting with farmers having debt, including principal amount and applicable interest up to ₹25,000, will be a family-wise benefit according to the guidelines issued on Tuesday.
Practically it would mean that if a family — family head, spouse and dependant children — would get waiver benefit of ₹1 lakh, even after putting together the loans taken from one or more banks, irrespective of the landholding of the family in different names and different loan accounts. Besides, the waiver amount would include both the principal and interest amount together. The waiver was promised by Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) before the December 2018 elections to State Assembly.
As per the extensive guidelines issued by Secretary (Agriculture) B. Janardhan Reddy, all crop loans sanctioned/ renewed on or after April 1, 2014 and outstanding as on December 11, 2018 are eligible for waiver. However, the waiver amount up to ₹1 lakh does not include processing charges, legal charges, insurance, inspection charges and any other such overheads.
According to Minister for Agriculture S. Niranjan Reddy there are 5,83,916 farmers in Telangana who have outstanding loan up to ₹25,000. As the State government has decided to waive the outstanding loans up to ₹25,000 in one go, an amount of ₹1,198 crore has been provisioned to be released during the current (March) month itself.
The loan waiver scheme will cover short-term production loans and crop loans against gold given by scheduled commercial banks, cooperative credit institutions including urban cooperative banks and regional rural banks. The guidelines have also specified the loans (advances) which are not eligible for the waiver scheme.
Accordingly, advances against pledge or hypothecation of agriculture produce other than the standing crop, tie-up loans, closed crop loan accounts/written-off loans, loans to joint liability groups (JLGs), rythu mithra groups (RMGs) and loan eligibility cards (LECs) and the loans that are restructured and rescheduled.
The guidelines have also defined short-term production loan as loans given in connection with the raising of crops and to be repaid within 18 months. It will include working capital loan for traditional and non-traditional plantation and horticulture crops.
The guidelines further state that loan waiver in respect of those farmers who have outstanding up to ₹25,000 would be covered in the first phase and for other farmers, with the outstanding amount of more than ₹25,000 and up to ₹1 lakh the waiver would be done in four instalments. It has been estimated that the waiver of outstanding loans beyond ₹25,000 would require another ₹24,738 crore and an allocation of ₹6,225 has been made for 2020-21.
