The government has decided to put in place a three-tier grievance redressal mechanism to effectively deal with grievances relating to the debt redemption scheme being implemented for farmers.
Accordingly, mandal level committees headed by the respective mandal revenue officer as nodal officer/convenor and concerned branch managers and mandal agriculture officer as members had been constituted.
The nodal officer would view the grievance of each farmer and information would be available to the bank branch to which the account belongs. The issues would be discussed by the committee by verifying the supporting loan documents/records/other documents submitted by the aggrieved farmer.
The committee would address the grievance of the farmer taking into account the guidelines issued. The committee should ensure that its decision is uploaded/ported to the National Information Centre (NIC) site from time to time. The branch concerned would initiate the follow up action on the issue with immediate effect and the mandal level committee could take the assistance of the Janmabhoomi committees if need be.
In case the farmer is not satisfied with the decision of the MRO panel, the grievance could be scaled up to the Revenue Divisional Officer who is the appellate authority.
The matter would be re-examined by the RDO with the help of the MRO committee and an independent enquiry could also be ordered for gathering the factual position and a final view could be taken and recorded.
A district-level committee consisting of collector/joint collector, lead district manager, joint director Agriculture and the controller/district coordinator of the bank concerned had been put in place for taking a holistic view of the matter and record its final decision.
Grievances and complaints can be filed online. The aggrieved farmer could approach the branch from where the loan was availed or MRO office or the Mee Seva centres that could provide internet facility to file online representation in the NIC portal.
Farmers could also submit their grievances giving reasons for reconsideration of their claim for relief and the same would be available online to the branch manager and the MRO. The farmers could subsequently furnish supporting documents to the MRO committee for considering relief/redemption amount. “In any case, the process of addressing the grievances of farmers should be completed by Jan. 9 positively,” the government said in its orders.
