Late verification of farmers' data irks UP chief secretary Rajive Kumar

LUCKNOW: UP chief secretary Rajive Kumar has expressed anguish over delay in ground verification of farmers' data for the farmer loan waiver scheme. In a hardhitting letter sent to all divisional commissioners and district magistrates, he has said the implementation was getting delayed as district authorities “kept the ground verification of farmers' data in abeyance“.
“District magistrates too did not take requisite personal interest in verifying the data provided to them by the banks,“ the letter, sent on September 2, says.The ambitious scheme that aims to free 86 lakh small and marginal farmers of their debt burden was one of the major promises made by the BJP before the UP assembly elections held earlier this year.
The scheme, proposed to be executed by making a budgetary allocation of Rs 36,000 crore, was kicked off by chief minister Aditya Nath Yogi with distribution of loan waiver certificates to around 7,500 farmers from Lucknow district on August 17.
State government had subsequently set a deadline for distribution of the certificates in rest of the districts from September 5. Kumar, in his letter, has taken strong note of the delay despite repeated directions from top authorities including additional chief secretary (institutional finance) and principal secretary (agriculture) to the DMs through videoconferencing. The chief secretary said the earlier deadline for data verification was August 12, which was extended subsequently to August 21. “Yet, the authorities delayed the data verification,“ said Kumar.
The chief secretary has now asked district authorities to collect data of the selected beneficiaries verified on a priority basis, besides getting Aadhaar cards of the farmers linked with their bank accounts. According to the scheme, data provided by the banks is proposed to be verified by a district level committee headed by the DMs. The scheme is proposed to be carried out in various phases.
The chief secretary's observation has sent the agriculture department in a tizzy. Principal secretary (agriculture) Rajnish Gupta, in his letter to district authorities, has fixed September 9 deadline for data verification of the first phase of scheme. Gupta has also asked DMs to get data mapped on land revenue records for further authentication. The records, he said, would also undergo validation check by the state government.