NEW DELHI: Lok Sabha on Tuesday witnessed heated arguments between the treasury and opposition benches over the issue of farm loan waivers with Speaker Om Birla making an intervention and telling the members that advances under the Kisan Credit Card scheme are not written off.
While asking a supplementary, NCP member Supriya Sule sought to know whether the government has any plans to waive off the loans given to the farmers under the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme.
Replying to the question, Parshottam Rupala, Union minister of fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying, said it was for the first time in last so many decades that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has extended the scheme to fishermen and dairy farmers as the KCC was earlier confined only to agricultural farmers.
He said its main aim is to provide small farmers institutional credit up to Rs 1.6 lakh without any collateral.
Besides, Rupala said, if a farmer repays the loan promptly, he or she would get three per cent interest subversion from the central government and some state governments too provide interest subversion up to four per cent to the KCC borrowers.
So, virtually a farmer is not paying any interest on his loan if it is paid on time, he said.
Sule and other opposition members then said the minister was not giving the answer to the specific question on whether the government was planning to waive off the KCC loans taken by the farmers, to which Rupala reacting strongly.
He said the opposition was only providing a lip service and the actual welfare work for farmers is being done by Prime Minister Modi.
When other opposition members also protested, the Speaker tried to calm them down by saying that as per his knowledge, the loans given under the KCC are never waived off.
Earlier, DMK members protested strongly when Union minister of state for fisheries and animal husbandry L Murugan said the Modi government has been pursuing welfare schemes as per the BJP election manifesto while some political parties and their state governments were not doing so.
DMK members, led by its leader TR Baalu, protested the remarks made by Murugan, who hails from Tamil Nadu.
Baalu accused Murugan of playing politics rather than properly replying to a bonafide question related to fishermen.
The speaker then told the DMK members that the minister has neither named any political party nor any state and that they should not be offended.
