Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has set new deadline to waive of crop loans, gold-loans. Going by reports, KCR has directed officials to implement his poll promise to waive off loans with in a week. All loans within Rs 1 Lakh will be waived off unconditionally as per KCR’s previous statement in Telangana Assembly. KCR has convened a meeting on Friday with Chief Secretary Dr Rajeev Sharma, Finance Secretary Nagi Reddy and other finance officials regarding this.
KCR apparently spoke to officials at length and asked them over the challenges in its implementation. Along with crop-loans, previous years’ loans, Agricultural loans taken on the surity of gold are likely to be waived off as per KCR’s decision. Cabinet Ministers are going to give green signal to this within less than a week. With this, Telangana government is going to suffer the burden of whopping Rs 18,000 Crores and estimated to benefit about 26 Lakh farmers. KCR has given go ahead for the officials after reviewing the meet.
It is learnt that KCR has decided to meet his Cabinet immediately regarding this. However, officials convinced KCR that convening Cabinet Meeting immediately is not possible as this has process has go through certain formalities. So, KCR asked authorities to convene Cabinet Meet as early as possible in order to approve Waiving of loans. Only loans upto Rs 1 Lakh will be waived off and if the debit exceeds more than 1 Lakh, debtor has to pay the remaining amount. In Gold loans, only loans that are taken for agricultural purpose will only be waived off. KCR even discussed with officials that how they’re going to transfer those funds into corresponding banks in due course. One possibility is to pay Rs 4000-5000 crores, including interest, to bank every year for a period of four years and the second possibility is to issue bonds. Since RBI is staunchly opposing the issual of bonds and adamant on paying back money to banks, and even mentioned in its recent letter to State government, KCR is mulling over to pay cash to the banks in mean time.
