In June 2017, in his first term as chief minister, Siddaramaiah had announced a farm loan waiver of up to Rs 50,000, under which the government is yet to clear Rs 129.67 crore.
As many as 30,733 farmers who were eligible for loan waiver through the 2017 and 2018 schemes are still running pillar to post get their waiver amount sanctioned, even as the Siddaramaiah government is gearing up to launch another farm loan interest waiver scheme and provide a compensation of Rs 2,000 to farmers.
In June 2017, in his first term as chief minister, Siddaramaiah had announced a farm loan waiver of up to Rs 50,000, under which the government is yet to clear Rs 129.67 crore.
Under the farm loan waiver scheme of up to Rs 1 lakh, launched by the Congress-JD(S) coalition government headed by H D Kumaraswamy, Rs 232 crore is pending for disbursal. From both schemes, cumulatively, Rs 361.67 crore is pending since 2021.
As many as 13,334 of the 30,733 farmers are yet to receive loan waiver benefits under the farm loan waiver scheme launched by Kumaraswamy in 2018. The remaining 17,399 are yet to receive aid under Siddaramaiah’s scheme.
According to data from the co-operation department accessed by DH, 17.5 lakh farmers were eligible under Kumaraswamy’s scheme, after rejecting 1.57 loan waiver applications processed through the special loan waiver certification software.
The delay of four to five years has resulted in most of these (30,733) farmers failing to secure loans from respective co-operative banks.
A senior bureaucrat in the co-operation department told DH that the entire country had come to a standstill due to the outbreak of Covid pandemic.
