Mumbai: Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Thursday announced the inclusion of farmers whose debt has been restructured in the loan waiver scheme. As many as 10 lakh farmers were earlier left out of the ₹36,000 crore Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojna, which is likely to benefit 45 lakh farmers across the State. Of the 1.36 crore farmers with bank accounts, 78.5% have small and marginal land holdings and 44 lakh are defaulters.
The State government had excluded farmers who had repaid their loans, those likely to benefit from a one-time settlement and whose debt had been restructured outside the cut-off period. Adressing the Legislative Assembly, Mr. Fadnavis said the loan waiver scheme will also apply to the families of those who committed suicide due to farm-related distress.
“It is a fact that farmers whose loans were restructured got fresh loans, but they now have two debts to pay off. Therefore, we have decided to bring relief to those farmers whose loans were restructured in 2016,” he said. Mr. Fadnavis said these farmers earlier had been excluded from the scheme as they were considered to have defaulted on their loans between 2009 and June 30, 2016.
Taking a dig at loan waivers extended by the previous Congress-NCP regimes, Mr. Fadnavis said two such schemes took 12 and 15 months respectively to be implemented. He said the previous government spent ₹1.3 crore in advertisements for waivers as small as ₹4,000. “We have only spent ₹36 lakh so far, and why shouldn’t good decisions be communicated to the people? It is imperative to avoid scams and bogus beneficiaries benefiting from this scheme meant for needy farmers, as was the case in the previous regimes,” he said in response to allegations by the Opposition that the scheme is a sham. Previous governments, he said, had waived loans for shops, vehicles and land. “Some ₹208 crore in loans was waived in Mumbai; many received negligible waivers, while a few managed to get loans of ₹60 lakh waived.”
Mr. Fadnavis said the government will be launching a mobile app for farmers to apply for waivers using their phones. “We announced the scheme to make our farmers credit-worthy and bring back them into the institutional credit system. We feel the scheme is a solution, but not the only one. Let us form a committee comprising all parties to monitor the scheme and ensure its success.” Earlier, the Opposition had claimed the government had announced the scheme without being ready to implement it.
The CM also said complaints about online forms were ill-founded as the government has already set up 26,000 counters for this.