Chandigarh: Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to waive off loans of distressed farmers at the national level.
In a letter Wednesday to Modi, the Chief Minister said that a one-time agriculture debt waiver for farmers was essential to reduce distress among the farming community and help in putting agriculture sector on a path of high growth trajectory. “The government of India should bite the bullet once and for all,” Amarinder wrote in the letter.
It was widely acknowledged that most of these ‘anndaatas’ (growers) of the country were facing severe debt stress, as a result of which some of them had even taken the extreme step of ending their lives by committing suicides, the CM said further.
Amarinder apprised the Prime Minister that the Punjab government alone had provided a debt relief of Rs 2,00,000 to all the marginal and small farmers who had availed institutional loans. As many as 5.52 lakh farmers have been provided a debt relief of Rs 4,468 crore so far, and the remaining would be provided the entitled relief under the scheme in the near future, he said.
The relief given by the Punjab government from its limited resources was not adequate and needed to be supplemented by the government of India, Amarinder wrote in his letter seeking a loan waiver at the national level.
Though the recent initiatives of the central government, including financial assistance under PM-Kisan scheme, which provides income support of Rs 6,000 per year, and pension to farmers were praiseworthy, they may not be adequate to mitigate the prevailing economic distress on account of high indebtedness of the Punjab farmers, he informed.
PTI
