A cash-strapped Uttar Pradesh government wrote off loans worth Rs.1,650 crore to farmers on Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s 74th birthday, fulfilling an election promise that is bound to further deplete the state’s dwindling coffers.
CM Akhilesh Yadav said 7.2 lakh farmers would benefit from the waiver. “Farmers who have taken loans of up to Rs.50,000 and have deposited 10% of the amount by March 31 will not have to pay any further,” he said. The loan waiver would cost the state government Rs.1,650 crore, and Rs.500 crore had already been earmarked from the budget for it.
Akhilesh also said he would shortly announce the state advisory price for sugarcane.
By applying conditions in the farm loan waiver, UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has whittled down the largesse which otherwise would have cost his state government a staggering Rs 14,000 crore. But in the process, farmers in the state’s endemically backwards regions like Bundelkhand will gain little from the waiver.
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