Chandigarh, June 3 -- Chief minister Bhagwant Mann on Tuesday announced an increase in the cooperative credit limit for various crops, calling it a sweeping overhaul of the Kisan Credit Card (KCC) system. He said it transforms a 26-year-old framework that had long left KCC holders in the state dependent on inadequate institutional credit and vulnerable to private moneylenders. Mann said the new KCC framework would put more money directly into farmers' hands, accelerate crop diversification beyond the wheat-paddy cycle, strengthen cooperative credit institutions, and help free cultivators from debt traps. The reforms are expected to benefit over 13 lakh farmers across Punjab, with credit support for several crops rising sharply, including horticultural crops, where loans can now go up to Rs.1.57 lakh per acre, compared to the earlier uniform limit of Rs Rs.,000 per acre. Addressing reporters here, Mann said the state government has decided to amend the policy for KCC holders to make it more pro-farmer. He said the government had broken 26 years of stagnation by replacing an outdated KCC system that had remained largely unchanged since 2000, asserting that the revised policy would increase the scale of finance available to farmers and ensure that institutional credit better reflects actual cultivation costs. The credit limit for the wheat has been hiked from Rs.24,300 per acre to Rs.30,000 per acre, the CM said. For the first time, Rs.2,000 per acre as a loan will be given for the management of crop residue, he said. The loan limit of sugarcane has been increased from Rs.44,000 per acre to Rs.1 lakh per acre, Mann said. "We are encouraging farmers to shift towards high-value crops. For the first time, agro-forestry crops such as poplar and bamboo, along with agro-horticulture crops like Jamun, have been brought under the credit framework. We have also introduced a scale of finance for lemongrass," he added. A sum of Rs.2,000 per acre will be given on poplar farming, Rs.13,000 per acre on bamboo, Rs.23,000 per acre on jamun, Rs.30,000 per acre on lemon grass, Rs.1.57 lakh per acre on garlic, Rs.92,686 per acre on rabi onion crop and Rs.80,981 per acre on hybrid tomatoes, the CM said....