Andhra Pradesh government’s significant poll promise, the loan waiver to farmers is going to burden the treasury less than expected. After avoiding duplicates and regrouping family members, the 1.05 Crore beneficiaries of the scheme have come down to 15 Lakhs and the total waiver amount is now 20000 Crore. A 3 step verification is done by the banks for weeding of the ineligible beneficiaries. The Aadhar link helped in the first stage, the Civil supplies database helped the second and land survey details in the third phase were used to identify the members of the same family and subsequently the waiver amount is put down to 1.5 Lakhs per family.
Fifty per cent of the accounts were deemed ineligible after these tests.Loan Waiver to farmers and women self help groups is one of the flagship schemes of Telugu Desam Party in the last elections. After coming to power, there is tremendous pressure on Chandra Babu to deliver it even though the state is reeling under the pressure of bifurcation. He announced to waive off loans up to 1.5 Lakhs per family which will make 97.6% families in the state debt-less.
