Maharashtra farm loan waiver: State govt changes deadline for clearing all pending dues again, gives 31 December as new date

The Maharashtra government has promised to waive off all pending farmers’ loans by the end of this year. The state government’s ambitious loan waiver scheme — known as the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojana — has already missed its initial deadline of 18 October by one-and-a-half months. As reported by Firstpost, still only a few hundred farmers have received their waivers, while lakhs of eligible farmers are in the dark. The government initially provided 18 October as the deadline to begin clearing pending dues. Then it was stated that all dues would be cleared by 31 October, 5 November, 15 November and 25 November, before this latest announcement was made. State cooperation minister Subhash Deshmukh told mediapersons in Osmanabad, “All of those who have applied for a loan waiver and have pending dues, will receive the waiver by 31 December.” [caption id=“attachment_4242645” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] A report in The Times of India on Tuesday said that the government is confident of adhering to a 31 December deadline. “We now have comprehensive data; we are sure the scheme will be implemented before 31 December. We have streamlined the entire process,” a high-ranking bureaucrat was quoted as saying in the report. He added that there were goof-ups at all levels, resulting in the delays in implementation of the scheme, but that has been ironed out now. The bureaucrat added that by 4 December, loans worth Rs 9,284.75 crore had been cleared, benefiting 17,82,533 farmers across the state. This was a significant improvement over the corresponding statistics for 27 November, when loans worth Rs 8,386.6 crore of 15,42,923 farmers were cleared, and for 27 October, when loans worth Rs 899.15 crore for 2,39,610 farmers were cleared. The farm loan waiver was originally announced on 24 June. The scheme was meant to benefit 89 lakh farmers in the state, making 40 lakh debt-free and providing relief to the other 49 lakh. Loans of upto Rs 1.5 lakh were to be waived off completely under the scheme’s provisions. At the time of its unveiling, Fadnavis had said he’s “aware” of the difficulties such an ambitious plan would entail, but said the government is prepared. “We are aware that a decision of this scale will have a bearing on the fiscal health of the state. To counter this, some tough decisions will have to be taken,” PTI reported him saying. However, the scheme has been mired in difficulties almost since its inception. Banks derailed Fadnavis’ pet project to such an extent that even the most critical rules devised to ensure corruption-free disbursal to only the most distressed farmers had been consigned to the bin, as revealed by a _Firstpost_ investigation in November. On 18 October, when the scheme’s roll-out should have ideally taken place, only a few hundred “possible” beneficiaries received their loan waiver certificates, the Firstpost report said. Furthermore, some farmers who did not even apply for waiver are reported to have received waiver certificates and some eligible ones received certificates with all kinds of errors: Wrong name, loan details, etc. However, The Times of India report said that these problems have been worked out satisfactorily. The actual number of eligible farmers came down to 56.59 lakh, while the loan waiver amount has also come down to Rs 27,000 crore. With inputs from PTI