Maharashtra says it has waived loans of 41 lakh farmers

Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, December 7

The Maharashtra government claims to have waived the loans of 41 lakh farmers and has disbursed nearly Rs 20,000 crores over the last few days after waiving the need for linking farmers' Aadhar cards to their bank accounts.

According to data released by the state government on Thursday, farm loans to the tune of Rs 14,864 crore were waived off and another Rs 4,673 crore were waived under a one-time settlement scheme for farmers.

The loan waiver came days after the Maharashtra government waived the linking of farmers' Aadhar cards to their bank accounts.

Several banks in both the public and co-operative sector had linked multiple farm loan accounts, in some cases more than a hundred, to a single Aadhar card number since the number had not been collected from farmers at the time of disbursal of the loans.

In many cases, bank employees had entered random numbers in the column meant for Aadhar numbers.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had earlier said that the linkage of Aadhar cards with bank accounts was essential for disbursal of farm loans in order to weed out the names of bogus beneficiaries.

Under the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojana, as the scheme is called, farmers will have loans upto Rs 1.5 lakh waived off.

Farmers, whose loans are waived off, are being given a certificate to the effect by the lending banks. This would enable the farmers to apply for fresh loans, an official from the state co-operative department said.

The state government claims to have received 56.59 lakh applications covering 77.29 lakh accounts.

Fadnavis said the government will soon complete the farm loan waiver process with dues of all eligible farmers being settled.