Loan waiver: Details of beneficiaries to be displayed to curb bogus claims

Audit to weed out such claims will be done only in specific cases, says Minister

BENGALURU - KARNATAKA - 10/07/2018 : Cooperation Minister Bandeppa Kashempur, during discussion at the Karnataka Legislative Council, at Vidhana Soudha, in Bengaluru on July 10, 2018. Photo: K. Murali Kumar

As the State government is set to implement its ambitious ₹45,000 crore farm loan-waiver scheme, audit of loan accounts to identify genuine beneficiaries in the cooperative sector will only be done in case of specific complaints.

While officials believe that the audit of all accounts before loan waiver if implemented would weed out bogus claims at the initial stage itself, Cooperation Minister Bandeppa Kashempur acknowledged that it would be difficult to undertake audit of nearly 22 lakh accounts before the scheme was implemented.

“We will audit wherever the department gets complaints. Serious action will be taken against officials if complaints are proved in the audit,” he added.

To prevent such bogus claims, he said the Cooperation Department had decided to put out a list of beneficiaries and loan amount waived, in front of the local cooperative societies. This was being done to prevent misuse of the loan-waiver scheme by unscrupulous functionaries in the societies.

There were about 5,000 primary agricultural cooperative societies across the State. “We are aware that some secretaries of primary agricultural cooperative societies are likely to misuse the scheme. By putting out the list of beneficiaries, the local community will know who has benefited. In many cases, secretaries may have utilised the loan without farmers realising the fraud. Such cases can be complained and audits would be performed,” Mr. Kashempur said on Sunday. “Through this, bogus beneficiaries could be weeded out. Further, the loan waiver amount will directly go into the accounts that will also prevent frauds,” he added.

Meanwhile, not all farmers benefiting from the scheme can actually have their outstanding reduced immediately.

“Money will be released by the government according to the loan renewal dates, which may vary from crop to crop. District-wise disbursals will start soon. We are expecting a Government Order on loan waiver this week,” Mr. Kashempur said.

On the use of Aadhaar number to identify genuine beneficiaries, he said that barring about 900 societies, which are computerised, others still use the book ledgers, which may make using Aadhaar difficult.