Maharashtra farmers to get loan waiver amount in their accounts from Wednesday

While the state had announced that 89 lakh farmers could benefit from the loan waiver, 77.29 lakh farmers from 56.59 lakh families applied for the benefit.

Four months after the state announced a loan waiver of Rs34,022 crore for farmers, the government is set to begin the disbursement of the amount – transferring it to bank accounts – in Mumbai from Wednesday.

“Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis will hand over the certificate of being loan-free to 25 farmers from various districts in Mumbai. Guardian ministers in various districts will soon hand over similar certificates in their districts,” said cooperation minister Subhash Deshmukh.

While the state had announced that 89 lakh farmers could benefit from the loan waiver, 77.29 lakh farmers from 56.59 lakh families applied for the benefit. According to primary estimates, around 64 lakh farmers are eligible for the waiver, bringing down the waiver amount to Rs24,000 crore. In the first phase, around 10 lakh farmers are likely to get the amount.

The number of beneficiaries reduced as government employees from Class A to C, income tax payers, former and incumbent office bearers of the civic and local bodies applied for the waiver. Nearly 2.41 lakh applicants, who have not provided their Aadhaar number, are likely to be declared ineligible.

VK Gautam, principal secretary, department of information and technology, said, “We have received more than 60% of the information from district commercial and nationalised banks and expect to receive the entire data in the next 24 hours. A few lakh farmers with ambiguous records will be put in ‘to be verified later’ category, for which the colour code is yellow. The ones in green will be eligible for immediate disbursement. The ones who are ineligible have been put in red code.”

The government has collated the data from income tax department, urban and rural development departments and the legislature. The Aadhaar-linked information is being verified against the forms the government has received.

The state level bankers committee has given list of 44 lakh farmers with outstanding loans with the district banks and 45 lakh with the commercial-nationalised banks. Primary scrutiny has revealed that 36 lakh applicants are from district cooperative banks and 41 lakh have outstanding loans with other banks.