At his pre-budget press conference and during the budget speech on the floor of the Assembly, Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy trained guns at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He picked on the prime minster’s statement, on 7 February, alleging Karnataka government’s farm loan waiver hadn’t reached more than 60,000 families. He said, PM Modi misled people on the floor of Parliament.
On Thursday, talking about the Karnataka government's loan waiving scheme, PM Modi had said that Karnataka’s coalition government had not delivered on its promises to farmers.
“Your government announced loan waivers, out of the 43 lakh only 60,000 people have benefited,” PM Modi had said.
In his rebuttal, Kumaraswamy said PM Modi doesn’t know about the progress made by the state. He said despite the state releasing the data on a website and the chief secretary briefing the central government, PM Modi presented wrong facts about how many farmers have benefited from the scheme.
“Yesterday, Narendra Modi presented false facts on the floor of the Parliament. He said that the loan waiver has reached only 60,000 families…. but money has been transferred to 3.9 lakh families. Around Rs 1,870 crore has gone their accounts already. Details of the money transferred, after cross verification, are uploaded for public on a website. Anyone can check details of transfers with account details,” said Kumaraswamy.
The Karnataka government has opened a special bank account for the farm loan waiver, to which Rs 5,400 crore was dispersed from the money set aside by the government. Out of which, Rs 2,098 crore has been sent to individual bank accounts after verification of documents, a finance department official further elaborated on CM’s statement.
In the 2018-19 budget, Rs 10,600 crore was earmarked for the farm loan waiver. In 2019-20 budget, an additional amount of Rs 12,650 crore (Rs 6,500 crore for loans from commercial banks and Rs 6,150 crore for cooperative sector) has been set aside.
According to finance department officials, even though the initial estimate cost of the loan waiver was Rs 48,000 crore, after the verification of the data collected from beneficiaries, the loan waiver is expected to be completed with little over Rs 22,000 crore.
They also added that with allocation in the 2019-20 budget, the government will be able to complete the process.
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