Maharashtra loan waiver move to benefit 60 lakh farmers, not 89 lakh

The government has announced that loans upto Rs 1.5 lakh of individual farmers, irrespective of the size of their landholding, would be waived.

The number of farmers availing loan waiver benefits is unlikely to cross 60 lakh, a shortfall of 29 lakh from the 89 lakh announced by the state government, which would also bring down the total loan waiver amount to Rs 28,000 crore from the announced Rs 34,000 crore. The shortfall is being attributed to “ghost accounts” in various financial institutions. According to officials, the decision to apply online for loan waiver helped check manipulations and eliminate the ghost accounts.

“Till Friday evening, the total families availing of loan waiver was 57.68 lakh. Even if we were to accommodate, in the eleventh hour, farmers who may have not been covered, the total will not exceed 60 lakh,” a senior officer in the Ministry of Cooperation and Marketing told The Indian Express.

On July 24, the state government had announced to waive loans amounting to Rs 34,000 crore benefitting 89 lakh farmers. An official in the department said, “The decision to extend loan waiver to 89 lakh farmers was based on information furnished by the State Level Bankers Association.” It was believed that there were 89 lakh farmers, out of a total of 1.36 crore in Maharashtra, who had taken crop loan, and that maximum farmers who would avail the loan waiver would not exceed 89 lakh.

Analysing the reasons for the shortfall, officials claimed that the decision to make online application for the loan waiver helped check rampant manipulations and eliminate ghost accounts, which lead to increased number of farmers and the total loan amount to be waived.

After the applications were filed online, the officials said, they were verified and funds credited directly to the bank account of individual farmers. The government had twice extended the last dates for filing the online applications. September 23 is the last date for filing the online form.

The government has announced that loans upto Rs 1.5 lakh of individual farmers, irrespective of the size of their landholding, would be waived. Auditors had been deployed across 355 talukas to scrutinise and match the loan amount in bank accounts with that applied online by the farmers.

Meanwhile, Kishore Tiwari, chairman of the state government’s committee to study farm distress, claimed that 30 lakh applications could have come from spurious sources with people trying to avail the loan waiver in a fraudulent manner. “…but thanks to the checks and balances in the system, they will not be able to do so,” he said.

However, a senior Mantralaya official said it was too early to term applicants as fraudulent. “The real work of scrutiny of the applications will start from Monday in which the online data will be matched with that of the banks. Only then we will be able to get to the real figure,” said the officer.

(With Partha Sarathi Biswas in Pune)