Chennai: The Madras high court ordered the state government to extend the benefit of the crop loan waiver scheme to all farmers irrespective of their land holding. In doing so, the court had struck down the upper ceiling limit in the eligibility criteria, which was five acres.
Directing the Central Government to share the burden, a division bench comprising Justices S. Nagamuthu and MV Muralidharan restrained the authorities from initiating action against the farmers for recovery of crop loans outstanding to cooperative societies/banks as on March 31, 2016 The bench passed the order on a writ petition filed by National South Indian River Inter-linking Agricultural Association represented by its state president, P. Ayyakannu, who has been spearheading the farmers’ agitation in New Delhi for the past 21 days.
The petitioner sought a direction to the State government, Cooperation, Food and Consumer Protection Department and the Registrar of Cooperative Societies to extend the crop loan waiver scheme provided under G.O. M.S. 50 dated May 23, 2016 and G. N.O. 59 of Cooperation, Food and Consumer Protection dated June 28, 2016 to all the farmers including those farmers whose landholding was more than five acres. Waiving crop loans to the tune of Rs 1,980.36 crore to other farmers would benefit only 3.01 lakh more farmers, the bench pointed out.
The bench noted that the weather had become erratic, the monsoons had failed and rainfall was very poor. Dams and water bodies had dried up. The Mettur Dam failed completely due to water dispute with Karnataka. Crops withered away and a lot of cattle died between 2011 and 2014. In 2015, floods drowned crops, and farming community suffered irreparable loss. They could not repay crop loans raised from cooperative societies and banks. Unable to bear the loss and pressure from financial institutions, many farmers committed suicide.
As per the G.O. a “marginal farmer” has been classified as one who has 2.5 acres of land and “small farmer” has landholding between 2.5 acres and 5 acres of land. While they got the reprieve, those who had more than 5 acres were left out of the scheme. The PIL was filed on the ground of discrimination and arbitrariness.
“It is crystal clear that the government evolved a policy to give waiver of crop loans to small and marginal farmers because that was in the election manifesto of the particular political party”, the bench said.
The loan waiver costing Rs 5,780 crore benefited 16.94 lakh small and marginal farmers. Waiving crop loans to the tune of Rs 1,980.36 crore to other farmers would benefit only 3.01 lakh more farmers, the bench pointed out. Extending the benefit to all farmers, the bench said, “We are aware that the financial situation of the State is grim. It is already single-handedly shouldering the burden to the tune of Rs 5,780 crore and it will be an additional burden to bear ”.
“We are hopeful that the Centre will share the burden with the State and extend maximum financial help to to tide over the situation”, the bench said and directed the government to issue consequential order in three months.
The bench appreciated P Ayyakannu for taking up the cause and advocate-general R. Muthukumaraswamy and S. Muthukrishnan, counsels for the petitioner, for rendering assistance.
