Govt's farm loan waiver scheme didn't do much for Maha farmers

Pune (Maharashtra, India): Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government had announced the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule farm loan waiver scheme on February 25, 2020, but even after two years, the scheme has not benefited many farmers as intended earlier.

As of now, the scheme has benefitted around 31.71 lakh farmers and loans worth Rs 20,243 crores have been waived.  At the time of the scheme's announcement, tentative 73 lakhs farmers were expected to be beneficiaries and the burden on the exchequer was expected to be Rs 40,000 crore.

As per state government, they have identified 32.82 lakh bank account holders eligible for the loan waiver scheme and out of them, 32.37 lakh have even completed their Aadhaar verification with the respective banks.

Sources confirmed that, due to technical issues in data submission and Covid -19 outbreak, the implementation of the farm loan waiver has not yet picked up speed. Further, data of farmers had to be entered in 66 columns in the software provided by the government, due to which glitches took place.  

State Cooperation Minister Balasaheb Patil confirmed that around 45,000 bank accounts of farmers have not come forward to claim benefits. 

"See, because of the Covid-19 outbreak things have changed. Entire government system was busy dealing with the pandemic. In addition to that, there are around 45,000 bank accounts of farmers who have been eligible for the crop loan waiver scheme, but the account holders have not come forward to claim the benefit but now government is working on implementation of this scheme on priority basis,” he added.

Patil further  stated that the government has now overcome the hurdles before it and that the administration will continue to implement the loan waiver scheme until the last eligible farmer is given its benefits.

MVA Government announced  Loan Waiver Scheme for farmers who had up to Rs 2 lakh in pending loans between April 1, 2015 and March 31, 2019. Under which the government  announced a one-time settlement scheme farmers with an outstanding of more than Rs 2 lakh crop loan, which makes them ineligible in the ongoing scheme, can opt for this scheme. The government will pay Rs 2 lakh only if the farmer agrees to pay the outstanding amount. The other scheme, under which farmers who regularly repaid their crop loans will get an incentive of up to Rs 50,000.  

However, Ajit Nawale, General Secretary of Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha criticised the government for the slow implementation of Farm Loan Waiver Scheme. According to him, there are lakhs of farmers have not benefited from this scheme which leads to increase in farmers suicide ."Under this scheme ,the government decided to provide Rs 50,000 ex gratia to those  who regularly paid their dues and benefits to farmers who are ready to opt for one time settlement of their dues. However nothing happened on both fronts. Means this Government is punishing farmers  who regularly paid their dues.’’

Finance Minister Ajit Pawar confirmed that because of the financial situation of the state there is delay in implementation of the scheme. He said, "The state government had announced the scheme in 2020-21, but due to financial constraints it never took off. Now with the situation improving, we decided to revive the initiative,” said deputy chief minister and state finance minister Ajit Pawar. According to Pawar  due to COVID-19 lockdown as taxes more than Rs 1 lakh crore did not come to the state treasury.