Chandigarh: Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday lashed out at the Punjab Congress government for playing joke with the lives of farmers on the name of crop loan
waiver scheme. He alleged that state government is responsible for fraudulent crop loan waiver for which bribes were also being exchanged.
The former deputy chief minister sought an independent probe into the entire alleged scam stating it was shameful that ruling Congress was making money out of the misery of farmers. He added that the case should be handed over to an independent agency as the Congress government could not be trusted to take action against its own legislators who were behind the scam. "The government's repeated betrayals on this issue have left farmers with no other choice", said Badal adding that the SAD would also launch a protest movement against this injustice.
Nearly 400 farmers had committed suicide after the state government failed to implement the promised Rs 90,000 loan waiver covering cooperative and nationalized banks as well as private money lenders, revealed Badal. He further highlighted that the latest victim in the list of such farmers was a farmer from Lehragaga in Sangrur, Sikander Singh, who took his life on Thursday after finding out that his name was not in the beneficiary list of crop loan waiver. He was under a debt of Rs 5 lakh.
Stating alleged that Congressmen had vitiated the entire exercise by resorting to corruption which had left lakhs of deserving beneficiaries out of the ambit of the current crop loan waiver scheme. "The present scheme is only for crop loans which have a traditional recovery percentage of 95%," he said. The SAD president also added, "Small farmers with less than five acres of land are being denied this waiver if their debt amount is even one rupee more than Rs 2 lakh. Similarly, marginal farmers with less than 2.5 acres of land are also being kept out of the ambit of the scheme. And, no relief had been given to farm labourers."
