With an eye on the coming Assembly elections, due early next year, the ruling Congress government in Punjab has announced waiver of ₹590 crore worth of loans under the farm debt waiver scheme for labourers and the landless farming community.
“Cheques would be issued at a State-level function on August 20,” said an official statement after a high-level meeting held here.
The government would pay off loans to the tune of ₹520 crore of 2,85,325 members of the Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS), thus ensuring a relief of ₹20,000 a member, said a statement, attributing to Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. He has directed the Finance and Cooperation departments to kick off the process for effective implementation of the decision on the ground.
Debt relief scheme
The government had formulated a debt relief scheme for farm labourers and landless farming members of PACS-2019, which would cover only the consumption loan of the members of the PACS advanced by the District Central Cooperative Banks through the cooperative societies, said the statement.
The announcements follow the waiver of the loans to farmers under the Chief Minister’s flagship ‘Debt Waiver Scheme.’ “So far, loans worth ₹4624 crore have been waived of as many as 5.64 lakh farmers under the scheme, which was announced as a part of the 2017 poll promises by the Punjab Congress,” it stated.
In addition, loans of the Scheduled Caste (SC) and Backward Class (BC) categories have been written off up to the amount of ₹50,000 each, including waiver upto ₹58.39 crore of 6405 beneficiaries by the SC Corporation and ₹20.71 crore of 1225 beneficiaries by the BC Corporation, said the statement.