Nalgonda MP and senior Congress leader N. Uttam Kumar Reddy demanded the Telangana government to make sufficient allocations to clear the long-pending dues, including those under the fee reimbursement scheme and women self help groups.
In an open letter to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, he demanded that the State government allocated ₹20,000 crore for assured farm loan waiver, ₹4,000 crore for dues of women SHGs and ₹3,270 to clear fee reimbursement dues.
“The annual Budget for Telangana for 2023-24 will be presented in the first week of February. Since this will be the last Budget of your government before the next Assembly elections, we demand sufficient allocations to ensure the release of all the pending dues,” he said in the letter.
He reminded that the Chief Minister had promised a farm loan waiver of up to ₹1 lakh to Telangana farmers on December 2, 2018. However, crop loans up to ₹35,000 only have been cleared. “Release ₹20,000 crore immediately for ₹1 lakh farm loan waiver as more than 20 lakh farmers and their families are still waiting for it,” he demanded.
He also said that the government did not waive off the entire farm loan of ₹1 lakh in a single take. Consequently, bank accounts of lakhs of farmers have been placed under Non-Performing Assets by banks. So, a provision should be made to clear the pending loans, along with accumulated interest, in the next Budget. He also alleged that nearly 10 lakh farmers were relieved from the list of beneficiaries on the pretext that they borrowed from multiple banks. “This is a huge injustice and the government should review the decision.”
With regard to the arrests of women of SHGs, he said that the State government has not released arrears of nearly ₹4,250 crore nor paid loan interests. The government did not release ₹2,200 crore of interest to 3.85 lakh SHGs of rural areas and ₹750 crore to the 1.52 lakh SHGs of urban areas. Overall, the government owes ₹3,000 crore to SHGs under the interest-free loan scheme. Further, the government has retained ₹1,256 crore of premiums being paid by the SHGs towards insurance under the Abhaya Hastam scheme, he said.
Mr. Reddy said that the government owes nearly ₹3,270 crore to nearly 15 lakh students under fee reimbursement scheme. “No amount was released towards it since 2020-21. There are dues of ₹828 crore in 2020-21 while not a single rupee has been released for the academic years of 2021-22 and 2022-23,” he said.
“The lack of seriousness in releasing these funds can be seen from the fact that in 2021-22, the Finance department released just ₹1 crore and kept ₹2,183 crore pending. Not a single rupee was released in 2022-23,” he added.