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Under pressure from the Opposition parties over the delay in implementing the farm loan waiver promise, Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu today announced his government would clear these loans of the size of up to Rs 50,000 per family with immediate effect.
The first phase of loan clearance involves 2.6 million farmers who were grouped into 2.2 million family units since the government had set Rs 1.5 lakh as an upper limit for each eligible family. The chief minister said crop loans and tied-loans (loans given to cane and tobacco growers) would get the first priority.
There are over 8.2 million agriculture accounts in operation in Andhra Pradesh of which 4.2 million accounts have been considered for the waiver in the first phase, according to the government. The remaining would be processed in the second phase, which is expected to commence a month later, it said.
On June 8, Naidu signed his first file on the constitution of an expert committee for working out the modalities of the loan waiver promised by him in the general elections. Later, the government floated a separate agency under the name of the Farmers Empowerment Corporation to mobilise and disburse the money to be paid to the banks under the loan waiver programme.
After this, the government issued orders transferring Rs 5,000-crore earmarked in the Budget to the corporation with an understanding that the total loan amount of the eligible farmers would be cleared in 4-5 installments.
The government seems to have change the earlier plan by announcing a one-time settlement of loans of up to Rs 50,000, though the total amount involved in such exercise was not immediately known. Naidu had promised to waive all agriculture loans, including gold loans, during the election campaign.
As the farm loan waiver remained on paper even after six months, the Opposition YSR Congress Party announced an agitation programme demanding immediate implementation of the election promise.
