Efforts on to provide relief to farmers from debts, says CM

Jalandhar, Oct 13 (UNI) Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh today expressed reservations over the move to bring rural indebtedness Bill but said his government was making efforts to provide relief to farmers from debt burden.

Talking to reporters here, Mr Singh, who was earlier contemplating the move to bring the bill to waive off farmers' loans, said the bill would not have worked.

He said that with a view to providing relief to farmers the state government had already launched one time settlement scheme to provide the farmers relief in repayment of their oustanding cooperative bank loans.

Besides this, his government was holding talks with concerned authorities at the Centre to provide relief on loans advanced to farmers by nationalised commercial banks.

The state government has also formed a committee under Rural Development and Panchayat Minister Lal Singh to hold a dialogue with ''adatiyas'' (commission agents-cum- money lenders) for working out a formula for providing relief from debts on farmers, he added.

Capt Singh expressed the hope the efforts would yield results and some formula would be worked out to provide relief to farmers from the debt burden even before the implementation of model code of onduct for the next assembly elections.

UNI SS VKJ LS HT1842