Bengaluru: He is yet to get a full fledged cabinet but Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, who has been under great pressure from the opposition BJP and farmers to keep his poll promise on waiver of agricultural loans, is taking no chances and on Wednesday, with Congress leader and Deputy Chief Minister Dr. G. Parameshwar by his side, he announced that all farm loans taken between 2009 and 2017 would be written off in two phases.
Karnataka had witnessed a huge number of farmer suicides during the tenure of the Siddaramaiah government from 2013-18 with recurrent droughts and the vagaries of the market leaving them debt-ridden. Like Kumaraswamy's JD(S) which has a strong vote base among farmers, alliance partner, Congress too hopes to garner huge goodwill across rural Karnataka with this gesture ahead of the parliament polls in 2019 which could be why Deputy CM Dr. G. Parameshwar of the Congress was prominently present at a meeting of farmers at which the CM made the all important announcement.
The Chief Minister said he would discuss the second phase of the loan waiver with Congress president Rahul Gandhi. But before that the loan waiver would be discussed by the cabinet, which would be expanded in a day or two.
