The YSR Congress has decided to intensify its efforts to expose the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) government on its failure to keep poll promises, particularly loan waiver to farmers and women self help groups, by stating a series of protests starting from Wednesday.
Stating that Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu had miserably failed on all fronts in his five-month rule, YSRC president Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy said his false promises had pushed the farming community and SHG women into deeper trouble as they did not repay loans taken from banks as they believed in his word of getting their loans waived.
The party would hold protest ‘deeksha’ at all 663 mandal offices on November 5, similar protest would be held in front of all collectorates on December 5 and two-day hunger strike on January 6 and 7, Mr. Jaganmohan Reddy told reporters here on Tuesday. He himself would sit on a fasting protest in Godavari districts, he said.
The first SLBC meeting after Mr. Naidu took over as the Chief Minister had put the outstanding agriculture loans at Rs. 87,612 crore and SHG loans at Rs. 14,204 crore and the total debt was Rs. 1,01,816 crore. However, Mr. Naidu had sanctioned only Rs. 5,000 crore for loan waiver and claiming that his government had written off 20 per cent of the debt burden of the farming community ignoring the fact that it would not even meet the interest burden of Rs. 14,000 crore and another Rs. 14,000 crore of penal interest for not repaying the loans in the last fiscal.
As the farmers and SHG women did not repay loans, the former had lost the crop insurance coverage as their crop loans were not renewed this year and the banks were recovering interest on loans from their savings banks accounts. The pity was that the official statistics themselves put the crop loss due to Hudhud cyclone completely in 3.42 lakh acres and over 50 per cent in another 3.09 lakh acre, most which would have been covered under crop insurance scheme had the farmers repaid the loans or the government cleared them.
Similarly, of the 43,11,686 social security pensions as on date when Mr. Naidu had taken over the government had already cut them by over 10 lakh. Against the requirement of Rs. 3,650 crore, the government had allocated only Rs. 1,338 crore in the budget, he said.
