The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Anantapur News : Fake passbooks add to crop loan muddle

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 25, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Anantapur

Fake passbooks add to crop loan muddle

By B. Chandrashekhar

ANANTAPUR, AUG. 24. The widespread menace of fake pattadar passbooks and high crop insurance benefit being received by the district for the last couple of years is leading to direct confrontation between bankers, MROs and farmers in issuance of new crop loans all over the district.

Farmers' ire

Protests and attacks on banks and officials by angry farmers have become the order of the day. Fake pattadar passbooks were first detected during the distribution of subsidised seed groundnut in June. it is now being assessed that the number of fake and tampered pattadar passbooks is very high.

Official sources have analysed that getting crop loans with the help of fake passbooks with forged signatures of the officials concerned and evading repayment of loans has increased due to occurrence of drought in the district. Besides, some farmers also tampered with their passbooks by increasing the extent of their landholding to get maximum benefit from crop insurance in the event of crop failure.

Fake passbooks are being detected while issuing fresh crop loans. The role of mandal-level revenue officials is also being doubted in the creation of fake passbooks as most of such passbooks are being created with the help of missing blank passbooks from MROs' offices.

Forged signatures

Andhra Bank branch at Penukonda has detected 11 fake passbooks with forged signatures recently. When the matter was inquired after a formal complaint lodged by the bank, the charge was proved. Criminal cases were registered against 11 persons who had taken fake passbooks and the person who had forged the signatures of the officials concerned.

It was found during the inquiry that of the 11 fake passbooks, seven were missing blank passbooks from Rolla MRO office and one from Penukonda MRO office. Official sources stated that an inquiry was also going on against Aswartha Narayana, the former MRO of Rolla, for 360 blank passbooks which went missing from the office. Presently, he is working at Chilamattur.

Similarly, four persons of Vemulapalli village had created fake passbooks on the land pertaining to a farmer who had left the village in search of livelihood and got new crop loans issued from Andhra Bank at Yellanur.

The fraud came to light when the original farmer on whose land survey numbers the four fake passbooks were allegedly created, returned and approached the bank for crop loan. Fresh loan was also taken by another impostor by creating a passbook with the land survey number of a genuine farmer in the same village.

At Talupula, where a large number of fake passbooks are said

to be in circulation, the MRO allegedly received brickbats and chappals yesterday for selecting genuine farmers for issuance of fresh crop loans by Sree Anantha Grameena Bank.

The MRO of Talupula, C.K. Devaraja Rao, has evolved a fool-proof method to overcome the menace.He has prepared lists of all farmers in the 11 revenue villages and 109 hamlets in the mandal with details of their land-holding (extent of land) and survey numbers and as per the proforma under 1A (the farmers having pattadar passbook and residing and having land in the same village), 1B (the farmers having pattadar passbook, residing in one village and having land in another village) and the farmers not having pattadar passbooks, along with their photographs.

With the help of the data, officials have detected 300 fake pattadar passbooks during the distribution of subsidised seed groundnut and redgram seed.

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