Keeping poll promise Adityanath waives farmers' loan upto Rs 1 lakh
Source: The Sangai Express / Courtesy IndiaToday.in
New Delhi, April 04 2017:
Delivering on the Bharatiya Janata Party's poll promise, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today waived off farmers' loan of upto Rs 1 lakh.
The decision taken in the first meeting of Adityanath Cabinet will add a burden of Rs 36 thousand crore on the State exchequer and benefit nearly 86 lakh farmers.
Uttar Pradesh has 2.15 crore farmers.
The BJP, which won a massive majority bagging 312 seats in the 403-seat Uttar Pradesh Assembly, in its Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra (manifesto), had promised to waive the loans of small and marginal farmers.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi too had said during campaigning that writing off farm loans would be among the foremost tasks of the BJP Government in Uttar Pradesh.
Although there is no Constitutional compulsion of convening the first Cabinet meeting within a certain period, traditionally the ruling party has held it within a week or so of forming the government.
The Adityanath government was sworn-in on March 19 .
Government sources said around 2.30 crore farmers in the State suffered losses due to natural calamities in the recent past and were unable to repay loans amounting to about Rs 62,000 crore.
They also said that it could be difficult to handle the burden of loan waiver in a single financial year and that was one of the reasons to put the Cabinet meeting on hold till a way was found to honour the Mrime Minister's poll promise.