Deputy Commissioner Jalandhar Varinder Kumar Sharma today asked the Agriculture, Rural Development and Cooperation department to embark a major campaign for encouraging the farmers to adopt institutional lending.Chairing a meeting here at District Administrative Complex, the Deputy Commissioner said that as per schemes of the Government the farmers could get easy loans for their crop at a meagre rate of interest of 4%. He said that unfortunately instead of availing this the farmers were getting exploited at the hands of non institutional lending where they have to pay huge rate of interest. Mr Sharma said that this needs to be checked immediately for which all the stakeholders especially Agriculture, Rural Development and Cooperation needs to play a major role.The Deputy Commissioner said that these departments must start a major and sustained sensitisation campaign to encourage more and more farmers to get easy loan through the banks. He said that all the farmers registered on PM Kisan Portal could apply for the loan through the banks by simply filling a form.
Mr Sharma said that there was no processing fee for application of loan to benefit the food growers of the state.The Deputy Commissioner said that all the farmers who have been hitherto not issued the Kisan Credit cards or those who have not renewed their cards must be covered under the fortnight long special drive launched from February 8th. He said that bank branches should map the PM Kisan beneficiaries vis-a-vis KCC holders to have a list of PM-Kisan beneficiaries who do not have KCC from their branch. Mr. Sharma said that this list should be shared with village Sarpanch, who shall motivate such farmers to approach bank branch for issue of KCC.Taking part in deliberations Additional Deputy Commissioner Mr Vishesh Sarangal said that active participation from Panchayat Secretaries, Patwaris and Agriculture Department Officers was solicited to ensure hassle free availability of land records documents and sanction of KCC limit by the bank branches. He said that this work must be completed with missionary zeal. On the occasion Chief Agriculture Officer Dr Naazar Singh, District Development and Panchayat Officer Mr Iqbalpreet Singh Sahota, Lead Bank Manager Mr PS Bhatia, Deputy General Manager NABARD Mr LK Mehra and others