Chandigarh, December 22 – The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today lambasted the
Congress government for playing fraud with Punjab farmers and pushing them
towards further ruin and suicide by denying loan waiver to them.
“Like
every promise of the Congress party, the Rs 90,000 loan waiver promise made by
Capt Amarinder Singh which was to encompass all farmers who had taken loans
from cooperative, national and private money lenders, has been whittled down to
a piddly sum and now primarily covers farmers who have taken crop loans”, said
former minister Bikram Singh Majithia in a statement here.
Terming
the latest government move as akin to neglecting a festering wound to treat a
scratch, the Akali leader said money from the State exchequer would now be
spent on waiving crop loans of up to Rs two lakh and not achieve any objective.
He said crop loans have a traditional recovery percentage of 95 per cent and
the government has never impounded properties of farmers to realise them since
1986 as disclosed by the chief minister himself while replying to a question in
the last Vidhan Sabha session. "This means the government is proposing to
conduct a farce in the name of implementing a crop loan scheme from January
next month which if implemented will not cover the real beneficiaries for which
it was devised".
Asserting
that the government was running away from its promise and abandoning farmers
who were in utmost urgent need of the loan waiver, Mr Majithia said small
farmers who had availed a loan of over Rs two lakh had been made ineligible for
the waiver scheme. “It is these farmers who are committing suicide in hundreds
after being unable to repay loans taken from national banks and private money
lenders”, he said saying it was unthinkable that they could be left out from
any genuine loan waiver scheme.
Similarly,
the former minister said marginal farmers had also been left out in the cold
while finalizing the proposed crop loan waiver scheme. "This proves
farmers were used as a vote bank and the Congress party befooled them by making
them fill forms for a complete loan waiver which it is now refusing to
implement".
Terming
the entire exercise as a farce which was being enacted to give the impression
that the government was implementing a loan waiver, when nothing of this sort
was being done, the Akali leader said farmers would not get justice until the
government accepted that loans of national banks and private money lenders
needed to be waived off completely. Asserting that the farming community would
never accept this injustice, he said the manner in which the government had
backstabbed farmers by announcing repeated loan waivers and now come up
with a farce in the loan waiver indicated it never had any intention of
honouring its promise in the first place. The SAD will also fight this tooth
and nail and not let the Congress government to get away with this cruel and
inhuman decision at any cost”, he added.
