No clarity, farmers stop paying loans

Muktsar : Farmers are confused about the type of loans which have been announced as waived by the state government. In such a scenario, banks are finding it difficult to recover other loans from them.
After Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh’s statement about waiving crop loans of Rs 2 lakh, farmers have stopped paying instalments of their loans.
A number of farmers are daily approaching the banks to get clarification on the loan waiver. Some banks have now displayed notices outside their branches asking farmers to pay their loan instalments to avoid extra interest or penalty.
A notice displayed outside the Punjab Agricultural Development Bank (PADB), Muktsar branch, farmers are informed that theirs were term loans and not crop loans, so they should pay their instalments by July 15 to avoid extra interest on it.
Reacting to the notice, Sukhdev Singh, a farmer leader, asked, “If the loans of agricultural development banks are not waived, what kind of crop loans have been waived off?. The government has played a joke with us.”
Another farmer leader Nirmal Singh said, “A number of farmers daily ask us about the crop loan waiver but we too are confused. Bank officials hardly have any clarification on it.” Paramvir Singh Bhandari, manager, Muktsar Central Cooperative Bank, said, “The state government had announced waiving crop loans of Rs 2 lakh. These are the loans which were approved by the societies under our bank. But we have not received any notification in this regard.”