JAIPUR: Farm

camps that start from Thursday have come in for criticism as opposition

on Wednesday said not only the implementation has been slow but the relief comes with various conditions attached.

The cooperatives department is holding a three-day camp at village cooperative societies to issue loan waiver certificates to farmers from February 7 to 9 as promised by the new Congress government.

The ministers in district in-charge will give away the certificates to at least 100 farmers on the first day. Five such camps have been proposed over the three days. The total number of beneficiary certificates to be issued in the camps is estimated to be around 13,200.

Chief minister

clarified on Wednesday that farm loans taken from cooperative banks will be waived in the first phase.

Though the Congress government had announced a ceiling of Rs 2 lakh for farm loans from scheduled banks, there is no such limit for loans availed from cooperative banks.

"Names of about 3.5 lakh farmers have so far been uploaded on the loan waiver portal and Aadhaar authentication has been done for 15,000 by Wednesday evening," said Neeraj K Pawan, registrar cooperatives department. Nearly 11 lakh farmers are expected to get the benefit of loan waivers in the cooperative sector, sources said.

Government in talks with banks to finalise modalities on waiver, says Gehlot

Chief minister Ashok Gehlot said as far as the agriculture loan waiver from the commercial banks is concerned, the government is in talks with these lenders. “The government is in discussion with banks to finalise the modalities and these loans will be taken up in the next phase,” said Gehlot.

However, officials said the government is yet to take a call on the cases of farmers who had availed loans from both co-operative societies as well as commercial banks.

Pawan said, “The government had not taken any decision on cases where a farmer had availed farm loan from both cooperative banks as wells as nationalised banks.”

He said, farmers names seeded on the loan waiver portal are being authenticated by Aadhaar to avoid ineligible people availing the benefit.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi had announced loan-waiver in the run-up to the state assembly elections as a major poll plank.

On December 19, Gehlot had announced to waive off farmers' entire short-term crop loans from co-operative banks and agricultural loans up to Rs 2 lakh for defaulter farmers from commercial banks till November 30, 2018.

The cooperative department has issued detailed guidelines for the same and issued a negative list having 12 parameters. Each farmer has to give an affidavit that they are not falling in the negative list.