Jaipur. CM Ashok Gehlot within 48 hours after assuming the charge of Chief Minister on December 17, 2018 took the decision of waiving crop loans of farmers of Rajasthan. He launched Rajasthan Farmer Loan Waiver Scheme, 2019 on February 6, 2019 and waived the total outstanding crop loans as of November 30, 2018 of the eligible farmers.
The real challenge before the government was to benefit the genuine farmers with this scheme. There were reports that many farmers in the state, who had not taken the loan were surprised to see their names in the loan waiver list.
Cooperative Minister Shri Udaylal Anjana said, “Congress party prior to the assembly elections had promised in its manifesto that if the party comes to power then it will waive the loans of farmers. After coming to power, the government wanted to come up with a foolproof loan waiver scheme so that genuine farmers are benefitted with Rajasthan Farmer Loan Waiver Scheme thus decided to take biometric verification using aadhaar.”
He said the state government using aadhaar based biometric verification benefitted more than 20 lakh farmer by waiving approximately Rs 8,000 crore crop loans. Bringing smiles on the faces of farmers, the state government waived approximately Rs 15,000 crore of eligible farmers under Crop Loan Waiver 2018 and 2019.
“This Rajasthan Farmer Crop Loan Waiver Scheme has set as an example and has become a ‘Model’ for crop loan waiver in the country, so that genuine farmers are benefitted,” Shri Udaylal Anjana said.
This has become evident that on December 5 when a six-member team including three senior IAS officers from the Maharashtra government came to Rajasthan to study the farmer loan waiver scheme-2019. The team praised the scheme after studying it. Apex Bank managing director Shri Inder Singh explained in detail about the implementation of farmer loan waiver scheme through a presentation.
Cooperative department principal secretary Shri Naresh Pal Gangwar said Maharashtra government’ cooperative department principal secretary Smt Abha Shukla wholeheartedly praised the cooperative department of Rajasthan government for implementing farmer loan waiver scheme in transparent and effective manner and benefitting genuine farmers in very less time. “It is a big achievement to implement loan waiver in transparent manner and no complaint from any farmers shows the effective implementation of the scheme. Benefitting genuine farmers by adopting aadhaar based biometric verification is really unique work,” Smt Abha Shukla said.
Maharashtra Government’s department of information and technology principal secretary Shri V S Srinivas said that the way loan waiver portal has been designed is unique and doing this work in prescribed time is mark of transparency and accountability of the Rajasthan government. He told that they had studied loan waiver scheme of other states, but the Rajasthan government has implemented the farmer loan waiver scheme in transparent and effective manner along with in easy way. The government has also disbursed crop loan online and benefitted the genuine farmers. Other members of the team praised the implementation of the scheme.
