The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Help promised to farmers who have repaid loans

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 05, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Help promised to farmers who have repaid loans

Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Cooperation Minister G. Sudhakaran said here on Friday that the government was taking steps to help the farmers who got excluded from the Central government’s loan waiver scheme because they had repaid their loans under a special drive of the Cooperative Department to collect arrears.

The Minister said that the government had written to the Central government and Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram to extend the scheme to farmers who had repaid the loans.

However, so far there had not been any response. The State government was willing to ensure the benefit to the farmers even by directing the return of the money collected under the recovery drive.

He said that reports that the farmers had lost the benefit for want of timely intervention by the government were wrong. The farmers were not getting the benefits because of the wrong policies of the Union Finance Minister which were loaded against the State.

Though the State was expected to get Rs.2,250 crore under the waiver package, latest figures indicated that the amount had been curtailed to less than Rs.1,000 crore.

Mr. Sudhakaran said that the State Cabinet had passed a resolution on June 4 urging the Centre not to deny the benefit to farmers who had repaid the loans.

Despite strong pressure by the State government and the Cooperation Department, the Centre had not budged.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Kerala

News Update

Stories in this Section