Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday announced that the state will waive off farm loans up to Rs 50,000 which were taken till June 20, costing the state exchequer Rs 8,165 crore.

Siddaramaiah made the surprise announcement in the Assembly, putting the Opposition on back foot, at least temporarily. The BJP, principal opposition party in the state, welcomed the move.

With this, Karnataka has become fourth state to announcement partial farm loan waiver after Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Punjab.

This waiver would benefit about 22 lakh farmers across Karnataka. Karnataka was under severe drought for the last three years and the burden of repayment of loans was becoming unbearable to the farmers.

The BJP claimed that it was because of their constant campaign that the state government was pressurised to go for farm loan waiver. BS Yeddyurappa was planning to sit on a fast for three days in July, seeking a farm loan waiver.

Kodihalli Chandrashekar, president of Raitha Sangha said, “We welcome the move, but the CM should have waived another Rs 3000 crore which are under nationalized banks.”

While speaking on the floor of the house, Siddaramaiah challenged the BJP to convince the Central government to waive off the remaining loans in the nationalized banks.

On Monday, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh announced a total waiver of up to Rs 2 lakh for small and marginal farmers (up to 5 acres) and a flat Rs 2 lakh relief for all other marginal farmers, irrespective of their loan amount.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had also announced a farm loan waiver on June 4. He said the waiver will come into force by October 31, 2017, and will be restricted to small and marginal farmers with land holdings of five acres. Around 40 lakh farmers are estimated to benefit from the step.

Earlier, the Yogi Adityanath-led government in Uttar Pradesh had also approved waiver of farm loans up to Rs 1 lakh, fulfilling a major election promise made by the BJP. According to state government, the decision will benefit 2.25 crore farmers and is likely to cost the state exchequer Rs 36,000 crore.

However, the Centre has ruled out any waiver of farm loan and said it will adhere to fiscal targets. On Tuesday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the Centre is not considering any such plan.

The government had in 2008 waived farm loan to the tune of Rs 74,000 crore.

The Centre, he said, will adhere to all fiscal targets including fiscal deficit. He said he would not comment on the loan waivers by states and had already made his position clear last week.

On June 12, Jaitley had said the Centre will not fund any of the loan waivers by states and they will have to find their own funds for doing so.

(Agencies)

Washington DC (USA): Sensitive information of nearly 200 million people in the US was accidentally leaked by a marketing firm contracted by the Republican National Committee, the country’s largest breach of electoral data to date, according to a media report.

The data leak by Deep Root Analytics contains personal information of roughly 61 per cent of the US population, technology news website Gizmodo reported.

The 1.1 terabytes of data seems to have been collected from a wide range of sources – from posts on controversial banned threads on a social network, to committees that raised funds for the Republican Party, the report said.

Apart from personal details, the data also contained citizens’ suspected religious affiliations, ethnicities and political biases, such as where they stood on controversial topics like gun control, the right to abortion and stem cell research, the report said.

The information was stored in spreadsheets uploaded to a server owned by Deep Root Analytics. It had last been updated in January when President Donald Trump, a Republican, was inaugurated and had been online for an unknown period of time.

“We take full responsibility for this situation. Based on the information we have gathered thus far, we do not believe that our systems have been hacked,” Deep Root Analytics’ founder Alex Lundry by quoted by the report.

“Since this event has come to our attention, we have updated the access settings and put protocols in place to prevent further access,” Lundry said.

Although it is known that political parties routinely gather data on voters, this is said to be the largest breach of electoral data in the US to date and privacy experts are concerned about the sheer scale of the data gathered.

There are fears that leaked data can easily be used for nefarious purposes, from identity fraud to harassment of people under protection orders, or to intimidate people who hold an opposing political view.

(Agencies)

Chennai: Hindu Makkal Katchi President Arjun Sampath on Monday said he has urged superstar Rajinikanth to join politics and was told he was “in preparation” for it.

After an hour-long interaction with the 67-year-old actor at his residence here, Sampath told reporters: “Rajinikath sir should free Tamil Nadu from the clutches of Dravidian rule for over five decades.”

He said that the “Kabali” star is well aware that the “system is corrupt”.

“We urged him to be the flag bearer of alternative politics. When we insisted him to join politics, he said he is in preparation for the same. He said he would feel guilty if he doesn’t do anything for the people of Tamil Nadu,” said Sampath.

Rajinikanth further added that only if he joins politics, can he realise his dream of interlinking Himalayan and peninsular rivers into one national grid.

Sampath also said Rajinikanth spoke about spiritualism.

(IANS)

New Delhi: The police on Monday registered a case of forgery on a complaint by a senior government official alleging that a fake letter issued by the cabinet secretariat about digitisation of land records, was being circulated with his forged signature.

The case was registered against unidentified persons on the complaint of Sheo Nath Singh, an undersecretary in the government whose signature is there on the letter, the police said.

The letter, which emerged on WhatsApp and has Cabinet Secretariat written on the top, reportedly mandated all the chief secretaries, additional chief secretaries of states and union territories to “complete the digitisation of land records, sale records from 1950 by August 14.”

It also said the government was “considering linking Aadhar numbers with the ownership of said properties” and that those properties that were not linked shall be considered for action under the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amended Act, 2016.

In his complaint, Singh said it was only after he started getting calls from people asking about the cabinet notification dated June 15 that he came to know about the matter.

The police said they have lodged an FIR at South Avenue police station under various sections of IPC pertaining to forgery of government document.

Director General of Press Information Bureau (PIB), Frank Noronha also tweeted about the fake letter.

“The letter attributed to Cabinet Secretariat on #Aadhaar linking to Land records, is completely fake & mischievous,” he said.

(PTI)