State starts prep to roll out farm loan waiver scheme from Jan 7

After the farm loan waiver scheme introduced by the erstwhile Devendra Fadnavis-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government faced flak over messy implementation,

After the farm loan waiver scheme introduced by the erstwhile Devendra Fadnavis-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government faced flak over messy implementation, the Uddhav Thackeray-led state government has started making preparations to roll out its loan waiver scheme — Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Shetkari Karz Mukti Yojana — on January 7.

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On Friday, the chief minister (CM) directed district collectors to publish a list of farmers whose bank accounts are not linked to their Aadhaar numbers. The collectorates have been directed to arrange buses for farmers at the village level to take them to the nearest Aaple Sarkar centres to get the process completed. The state wants to publish the list of all farmers eligible for the scheme by March, and has set a target of May to complete the rolling out of the scheme. Only those farmers who’ve taken loans up to ₹2 lakh between April 1, 2015, and March 31, 2019, will be eligible for the scheme. The state believes 30 lakh farmers will be benefitted.

The CM and deputy CM, Ajit Pawar, had a discussion with all the district collectors and divisional commissioners through video conferencing on Friday.

“Aadhaar will be the basis on which the scheme will be implemented. District collectors have been asked to publish lists of all the bank accounts having farm loans, but not linked to Aadhaar at the village level. Forms for making Aadhaar will also be filled for those who don’t have them,” said a senior revenue department official.

Officials said that once Aadhaar is linked, the list of farmers who have farm loans up to ₹2 lakh will be uploaded on the portal. The accounts will be scrutinised based on the eligibility criteria set by the state. Farmers will be called to authenticate all the details. Once all of this is cleared, the final list of eligible farmers will be issued and the waiver amount will be transferred into farmers’ accounts. The state has also formed district-level committees headed by the collectors to look into complaints of farmers and redress them. The Thackeray government has disqualified all politicians, officials and those paying income tax from the scheme. District collectors and divisional commissioners have been asked to maintain digital dashboards to update daily progress of the scheme. “Under the previous government, the loan waiver scheme was implemented by the cooperation department, which has no data of farm loans. We have put the onus on the revenue department, which has these details,” said a senior official.

Meanwhile, at a meeting of the CM and deputy CM with state level bankers’ committee, bankers were asked to submit a collective list of borrowers, and clear loans from the farmers’ accounts as soon as they get funds from the state. Bankers have agreed to submit the list by Monday, said a cooperation department official. “Chief secretary [Ajoy Mehta] also explained to them that 30 lakh farmers will be eligible for fresh loans for kharif crop season, which is in the interest of the banks as the agriculture credit is already reducing.”

Mehta will also be meeting the governor of the RBI about the matter.