In the first Cabinet meet on Tuesday, the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh waived off farm loans upto Rs. 1 lakh. The decision will benefit nearly 86 lakh farmers across the state.
The decision also marks the fulfillment of BJP’s poll promise to waive of farm loans if it comes to power in the state.
State Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi has said that a proposal has been prepared for loan waiver of farmers and it will be presented before the Cabinet at its first meeting.
The minister said that a list of 1.5 crore farmers had been drawn up. Sources in the state government said that UP was looking to meet the expenses through a loan from the central government and that things were moving ahead.
The BJP, in its Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra (manifesto), had promised to waive the loans of small and marginal farmers and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in his election speeches that writing off farmers’ loans would be among the foremost tasks of the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh.
According to officials, there are around 2.30 crore farmers in Uttar Pradesh of whom, around 2.15 crore fall in the ‘small and marginal’ category. They had suffered losses due to natural calamities in the recent past and were unable to repay loans amounting to about Rs 62,000 crore.
