(NDTV)
Yogi Adityanath will hold his first cabinet meeting on Tuesday evening, 15 days after he took oath as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. A loan waiver for farmers is expected to headline the meeting, which, ministers said, would focus on election promises made by the BJP. The party won a landslide mandate in UP last month.
Since he has taken over, Yogi Adityanath has made a slew of big announcements, including closing down illegal slaughterhouses, and has met his ministers informally several times, but had so far not called a cabinet meeting.
It is unusual for a new chief minister to not hold a cabinet meeting within days of taking over and the delay is being ascribed to his first trying to figure out how to fund a farm waiver. He is bound by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise at a public rally during the election campaign. “We will waive farmers’ loan in our first cabinet meeting after the results of the UP elections,” PM Modi had said.
The BJP’s manifesto or Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra for UP also promised to waive loans of small and marginal farmers. UP has 1.8 crore marginal farmers and about 30 lakh small farmers. The state’s farmers owe about 62000 crore to banks and cooperative societies, money which the state doesn’t have. The chief minister is trying to get central help, but helping fund a loan waiver in only one state will be impossible for the BJP-led central government. “We will have to either seek funds from the Centre or raise loans on our own,” a UP government spokesperson said.
