Telangana panel on loan waiver gets down to work

Bankers asked to furnish village-wise borrowers’ list to finalise norms

The officials’ committee constituted by the State Government to formulate guidelines for the implementation of agriculture loan waiver scheme has asked the State Level Bankers’ Committee (SLBC) to prepare village-wise lists of farmers who borrowed loans to finalise the number of beneficiaries and the total extent of loan waiver.

“The banks presently have service area-wise details of farmers and the service area often covers more than one village.

Duplication

But, such lists will lead to duplication of beneficiaries and the village-wise borrowers’ lists in alphabetical order will make the task of cross-checking easy,” sources in the committee that held its first meeting on Thursday told The Hindu .

Cross-checking details

Explaining the process to finalise the list of beneficiaries the sources noted:

“Ones the banks prepare lists of village-wise borrowers they will be asked to cross-check the details with other banks.

Besides, the bankers are also asked to prepare the gold loan borrowers, also village-wise before taking up de-duplication of beneficiaries”.

Verification

The beneficiaries’ lists thus finalised would then be displayed in villages seeking objections and after verifying the objections the final lists would be announced.

However, any beneficiary would be given only up to Rs. 1 lakh even if his/her total borrowing in the form of crop loan, agriculture term loan and gold loan is more than that. The list of eligible farmers and the extent of loan waiver amount would then be sent to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for its approval along with the list of farmers eligible for rescheduling of loans.

Agreement

Loan waiver is implemented only after an agreement between the RBI and the State Government to clear the debt of farmers who did not renew their loans this year is reached at, the sources stated.

In all, 39,07,409 farmers had availed a credit of over Rs. 19,200 crore for their agricultural needs last year in the form of crop/term/gold loans.

Of the total credit, Rs. 1,800 crore was taken as gold loan and loans to the extent of another Rs. 5,000 crore were renewed by farmers by repaying dues.