The Opposition Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) on Sunday appeared poised to corner the BJP-saffron alliance Government on a host of issues, including the “inadequate” implementation of the farm loan waiver scheme and its failure to provide Minimum Support Price (MSP) to farmers, during a stormy budget session of the Maharashtra Legislature beginning here on Monday.

Setting an aggressive tone for the four-week-long budget session, leaders of the various Opposition parties — including the Congress, the NCP, Peasants’ Workers Party and the Samajwadi Party — boycotted a customary session-eve tea hosted by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, in protest against the BJP-led Government’s “failure” to keep its various promises.

Talking to media persons after a meeting of Opposition leaders called to devise a joint strategy to take on the State Government during the Budget session, leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil of the Congress and his counterpart in the Upper House Dhananjay Munde of the NCP charged that the State Government had taken the people in the State for a ride through “false” promises.

Slamming the State Government for “shoddy” and “inadequate” implementation of the farm loan waiver scheme, Vikhe-Patil said, “The chief minister had promised that the Government would waive the loans worth Rs 34 lakh crore involving 89 lakh farmers would be waived.

But, as on February 7, the State Government has waived the loans of just 19.24 lakh farmers worth Rs 12,368 crore. Though it had promised that it would waive farm loans worth Rs 34 lakh crore, the State Government has loan information about just Rs 12 lakh crore”. Listing the un-kept promises of the Fadnavis Government, Munde said, “I cannot get to see even one beneficiary of the farm loan waiver scheme in the state. Farmers are not getting MSP for their produced.”

Nor have they compensated for the crop losses because of the recent unseasonal rains and hail storms. Rs Make in India’ and Rs Magnetic Maharashtra’ are flop shows. The state government’s claim about having created jobs are bogus”.

Apart from the farm loan waiver scheme and MSP, the Opposition parties have lined up plans to target the state government on issuers like the Kamala Mill fire, Bhima-Koregaon attack on Dalits, the delay in the disbursal of the compensation to the farmers affected by the recent unseasonal rains and hail storms and issues of corruption and unemployment.

Maharashtra’s Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar will present the state budget for 2018-19 on March 9.

Meanwhile, interacting with the media in the evening, chief minister Fadnavis said that his government was prepared to answer all the queries to be raised by the Opposition parties.

Dwelling upon the official agenda for the session, the chief minister said that apart from presenting the state for the coming financial year, the state government would table 16 bills during the session.

On the issue of compensation to farmers affected by unseasonal rains, hail storms and boll worm, the chief minister said that the state government had already completed a survey of affected areas. “The actual disbursement of compensation to farmers is in process. We have also sent a proposal to the Centre seeking an assistance of Rs 2,100 crore”.

Alluding to the Opposition’s charge about the “inadequate” implementation of the farm loan waiver scheme, Fadnavis said: “Now we have taken decision to once again allow farmers to submit applications for this scheme from 1st to 31st March 2018 for farmers who couldn’t submit applications due to some or the other reason”

“We have also decided to issue notices to district banks charging interest to farmers for the duration between loan waiver decision and actual disbursement,” the chief minister