Priyanka Gandhi has again urged the Prime Minister to waive loans taken by victims of the Wayanad landslides.
She has also asked the Centre to convert disaster relief loans given to Kerala into grants.
The July 2024 Mundakkai–Chooralmala landslides killed over 200 people and destroyed hundreds of homes.
Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has once again written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking a waiver of loans taken by those affected by the Mundakkai–Chooralmala landslides in Kerala’s Wayanad district and asking that disaster-related loans extended to the state be converted into grants.
According to PTI, the Congress said on Saturday that Gandhi, in her latest letter to the Prime Minister, urged him to direct banks to waive loans availed by disaster victims and to ease the financial burden on the state government by converting central loans for relief and rehabilitation into grants.
Reported PTI, the party statement recalled that Wayanad did not receive any central assistance after the Mundakkai–Chooralmala landslides, following which all Kerala MPs met Union Home Minister Amit Shah in December 2024 to raise the issue. It added that in February 2025, Gandhi had written to Modi stating that providing rehabilitation funds as a loan six months after the disaster was “unjust and inhumane”.
In that letter, she had also sought a waiver of loans taken by jeep and autorickshaw drivers, small traders and homestay operators who lost their livelihoods due to the landslides, the statement said. PTI reported that the Congress MP had made a similar request earlier as well, writing to the Prime Minister in October last year.
The statement further said that Gandhi had approached the National Disaster Management Authority, urging it to use its statutory powers to instruct banks to waive loans given to disaster-affected families. The central government, however, later told the court that loan waivers were not possible following amendments to the National Disaster Management Act, according to PTI.
The Kerala High Court subsequently observed that there was no bar on the Union government granting loan waivers under Article 73 of the Constitution, which defines the extent of the executive power of the Union.
The landslides that struck the Mundakkai–Chooralmala region of Wayanad in July 2024 killed more than 200 people and destroyed hundreds of homes, leaving large sections of the local population without shelter or sources of income.
(With inputs from PTI)
