40K farmers to get debt waiver certificates on Wed

Facing flak for growing trend of farmers’ suicide despite promise to prune the mounting debt waiver, the Congress-led Punjab Government finally has all its ducks in a row for harvesting the people’s trust by rolling out second phase of its farm debt waiver programme to end outstanding payment by cutting all loopholes in the previous one.

On coming Wednesday, Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh will give debt waiver certificates to as many as 40,000 farmers from Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Moga, Ludhiana, Ferozepur and Fazilka district in the state-level function at Nakodar in Jalandhar under the programme’s second phase.

In the first phase, the Government held a mega event on January 7 in Mansa district, where 47,000 farmers of five districts of Malwa region — Mansa, Bathinda, Faridkot, Moga and Muktsar — had received debt waiver certificates amounting Rs 167 crores.

Across Punjab, Malwa region recorded a high incidence of farmer suicides — the reason or which it was covered in the first phase.

After the roll out of the first phase, the Congress Government faced a lot of flak, not only from the opposition — Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Shiormani Akali Dal (SAD) – Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) combine, but also from his own party leaders, besides the farmers’ organisations.

While the Congress legislators take on their own Government for not involving them in identifying the “real” beneficiaries, the opposition parties and the farmers accused the Government of passing on the benefits to the undeserved — the rich farmers.

Following the complaint by the Congress MLAs, they were involved in the process and have scrutinised the self-declaration forms submitted by the farmers seeking waiver. In a non-official way, they are just authenticating farmers’ declarations whether they are marginal or small farmers which would then be forwarded to District Administration for final clearance.

With 40,000 farmers in the second phase, the total number of farmers getting farm loan waiver would reach up to 82,000 — much below the target set by the state government.

During the Government’s first Budget session in June last year, Capt Amarinder had announced to waive the debt for small and marginal farmers covering 10.5 lakh beneficiaries at Rs 9,500 crore.

The farmers organisations have even find fault with the Government’s formula of deciding on the waiving of debt, while demanding complete loan waiver — as promised by the Congress party before polls — “without any conditions”.

To make the programme a success, the Congress leaders are leaving no stone unturned by wooing more and more farmers to come for the event, arranging buses to ferry them to the venue, holding meetings to make them aware among other things.

As per the Government’s loan waiver notification, a waiver of Rs two lakh on crop loan will be provided to small or marginal farmers of the State.

In case of marginal farmers, loan waiver up to Rs two lakh will be provided even if he or she has more than this amount in loan from cooperative or public or private banks, but small farmers are not eligible for the same if their debt is more than Rs two lakh from multiple banks.

The figures available stated that there are 18.50 lakh farmer households in the state, of which around 10.40 lakh are in marginal category — that is up to one hectare or 2.5 acres of land holding, and small farmer category — that is up to two hectares or five acres of land.

For the purpose, the Government has prepared a software where all the cooperative banks’ branches, from across the State, have uploaded information about 5.17 lakh small and marginal farmers who have outstanding loans totalling Rs 2,710.14 crore.