Naveen wants PM to intervene for crop loan payments

The state government urged the Centre to provide adequate currency to cooperative credit structures to meet the cash demands of farmers.

Bhubaneswar, Dec 14: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention to ensure proper crop loan disbursal and payment on paddy sale to peasants.

"Keeping in view the difficulties of farmers' families and to facilitate them for crop loan and procurement payments, I seek your intervention," Patnaik wrote to Modi, a day after being informed by the district collectors on the plight of farmers due to demonetisation.

Patnaik said adequate currency should be made available to the District Central Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) by the currency chest branches of commercial banks and this should bemonitored by the Reserve Bank of India.

"The DCCBs should provide crop loans to farmer members and also to pay their paddy procurement proceeds as well as insurance claims," Patnaik pointed out in the letter. He said the restriction imposed on APCS (Agriculture Primary Cooperative Societies) to draw Rs 24,000 per week may be lifted so that the organisations can cater to the credit requirement of their farmer members.

"The procurement dues of the farmers being transferred from a government account, irrespective of the amount, may be allowed to be credited to the farmer's account without insisting on the time consuming process of KYC verification," Patnaik said.

He said that demonetisation of high value notes and restrictions on the DCCBs were leading to a severe liquidity crunch. Besides, the currency chest branches of commercial bankswere not providing cash to the DCCBs to cope with the demands of the farmers at the PACS level for their Rabi crop operation, the Chief Minister said.

The DCCBs are unable to cater to the demand for crop loans, procurement proceeds and insurance claims pertaining to Kharif-2015, Patnaik said. "We are finding it difficult to transfer the procurementprice of paddy from the Apex State Co-operative bank accountsto the farmers' accounts in different nationalised banks, cooperative banks and RRBs, if it is a Jan Dhan account. Such transfer were rejected in many cases causing enormous hardship to the farmers," Patnaik said in the letter.

PTI