Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy told his party workers during a celebratory ceremony in Bengaluru’s Seshadripuram on Saturday that he was “not happy about being the Chief Minister”.
The chief minister said, "I have swallowed poison like Lord Vishakantha. You all are happy that I became the CM. But I'm not.”
Kumaraswamy was speaking at the party programme organised to felicitate him for waiving off farm loans.
“It is true that I wished to become the Chief Minister of this state before the elections and promised people so many things. The people are now happy but I'm not happy being the CM,” Kumaraswamy said.
“If I want, I can step down any minute. Wherever I go, people come to greet me and tell me how they are happy about the farm loan waiver. What makes me sad is that they did not vote for my party to be able to form a majority. No state had the will to waive farm loans. There was so much opposition in the government but I kept my promise,” Kumaraswamy added.
Kumaraswamy announced a conditional waiver of farmer loans, setting aside Rs 34,000 crore in the first Budget presented by the JD(S)-Congress coalition government at the Vidhana Soudha on Thursday.
However, the loan waiver comes with a few conditions. The CM said that only loans up to Rs 2 lakh per farming family will be waived.
Also, the waiver is only institutional credit and loans taken from private money lenders will not be waived.
The reason behind this, he explained, was that after speaking to people concerned in the agricultural sector, he found that large landholding farmers had taken loans as high as Rs 40 lakh.
“In this background, as per the opinion of the farming community that it is not right to waive higher-value crop loan, I have decided to limit the loan amount to Rs 2 lakh. Due to this crop loan waiver scheme, farmers will get benefit of Rs 34,000 crore,” the Budget text read.