Lucknow: Over a fortnight after taking oath, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will hold his first cabinet meeting on April 4 where key issues in the BJP's poll manifesto, especially farm loan waiver, are likely to be taken up.
"The cabinet meeting will be held in the evening on April 4," state Health Minister Siddharth Nath Singh told reporters in Lucknow.
Speaking in Varanasi, state Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi said a proposal has been prepared for loan waiver of farmers and it will be presented before the cabinet at its first meeting.
BJP, in its Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra (manifesto), had promised to waive the loans of small and marginal farmers and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said in his election speeches that writing off farmers' loans would be among the foremost tasks of the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh.
According to officials, there are around 2.30 crore farmers in Uttar Pradesh of whom, around 2.15 crore fall in the 'small and marginal' category.
They had suffered losses due to natural calamities in the recent past and were unable to repay loans amounting to about Rs 62,000 crore.
As the figure is huge, the Uttar Pradesh government is mulling various options, including raising loans, to honour the saffron party's commitment to waive the loans of small and marginal farmers.
A state finance department spokesman said Finance Minister Rajesh Agarwal has already started deliberations with senior officials of his department in this regard.
The government will have to pay the banks to waive the loans of small and marginal farmers and for that, it will have to either seek funds from the Centre or raise loans on its own, the spokesman said.
Sources in the government said it would be difficult to handle the burden of loan waiver in a single financial year. They added that it was one of the reasons for putting the cabinet meeting on hold till some way was found to honour the prime minister's poll promise.
Some officers were of the opinion that a decision in this regard could be taken and a policy formulated later, but the chief minister insisted that the decision be made once the policy was clear, so that there were no hurdles.
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