Bhopal: The new chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, Kamal Nath, on Tuesday came under fire from the BJP for “withdrawing” from his promise of waiving crop loans of all farmers in the state as promised in the election manifesto of the ruling Congress.
The notification issued by the state government on Monday said outstanding up to short-term crop loans of up to Rs 2 lakh as on March 31, 2018, taken from nationalised and co-operative banks by farmers would stand waived off, a BJP spokesman here said. “It means only crop loan of defaulters will be waived,” he added, terming it a “betrayal of peasants”. But the Congress had given the impression in its election manifesto that the entire crop loans in the state would be waived, the BJP leader said.
Had the state government declared that outstanding till date would be written off, the entire farming community in the state would have benefited, he added.
Only one per cent of the farmers of the state would benefit if crop loans up to March 31, 2018 would be waived, he claimed.
According to him, number of defaulters in the state has declined sharply after the previous Shivraj Singh Chouhan regime had made agriculture loans interest free.
In another development, former state finance minister Jayant Malaiya dismissed the claim by Mr Nath that the latter had inherited an empty coffer.
