Major relief to farmers! Individual farmer in Maharashtra can avail Rs 1.50 lakh loan waiver

Mumbai, August 13: With Maharashtra standing by fulfilling the promises made to the farmers in the state, the Maharashtra government has now decided to waive outstanding loans of individual eligible farmers. Till now, the State government has spent Rs. 14,000 crore on the scheme.

 

The Maharashtra government has expanded the scope of the loan waiver scheme by extending the benefits to every member of the farmer's family in case of a separate loan account and issued an official order to this effect. A government resolution (GR) was issued on expanding the scope of the loan waiver scheme on August 10.

The decision had been announced in the monsoon session of the state legislature held in Nagpur this year. Earlier, the state government had considered the farmer's family as one unit and considered it eligible to claim a waiver of Rs 1.50 lakh agricultural debt. 

As per the GR, every member of the family having some agricultural debt will now be covered under the scheme, which was announced last year following strident protests by farmers.

"As per the revised rule, the farmers who have paid some money to the bank as per the first scheme but the cumulative amount of the outstanding loan is less than the revised norms; then the banks will have to return the amount to farmers," the GR stated. As per the initial scheme, if a farmer had a loan outstanding of more than Rs 1.50 lakh, then that difference has to be paid by him before he becomes eligible for the waiver.

For instance, as per the earlier scheme, if a farmer family had had a cumulative loan outstanding of Rs two lakh and Rs 50,000 had already been paid by them, the state would bear the burden of Rs 1.50 lakh, it said.

But now, as per the revised norms, the paid amount of Rs 50,000 will have to be returned to the family because everyone in the family is entitled for loan waiver now. The government had paid Rs 13,500 crore to banks towards bad loans till March this year, which benefitted 35.32 lakh farmers.

However, the government wanted to cover at least 77 lakh farmers. While announcing the Rs 34,000-crore Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojana last June, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had said 89 lakh farmers would benefit from it.

However, the implementation of the scheme and the applications have to be filed online which was criticised by many quarters, including farmers, due to a long list of eligibility criteria. The scheme was tweaked subsequently to make it more feasible.