Maharashtra farmers' loan waiver: Less than 15 lakh farmers will benefit from scheme, claims Congress

Pune: The Maharashtra Congress Saturday claimed that less than 15 lakh farmers will get the benefit of the farm loan waiver scheme announced by the state government. Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said the state government figures on the number of farmers who will be benefitted by the farm loan waiver are misleading. “With this farm loan waiver scheme, the state government is trying to mislead the farmers by claiming that 89 lakh farmers will get benefit from the farm loan waiver of Rs 34,000 crore. “However, in reality, less than 15 lakh farmers are going to be benefitted from it,” claimed Sawant at a press conference here. “There will be a loan waiver worth Rs 5,000 crore and not of Rs 34,000 crore as has been claimed by the state government,” said Sawant. [caption id=“attachment_3766309” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. PTI[/caption] As per the state government’s resolution, farm loans taken between 1 April, 2012 and 30 June, 2016 will be waived. “So the farmers who had taken farm loan between 2008 (after UPA government’s loan waiver) and 2012 will not get the benefit,” he said. Alleging that the government is inflating the statistics as far as the number of farmers is concerned, Sawant said the government had sought a report from state level bankers committee (SLBC) and as per their report, till 31 March, 2016, there are 1.36 crore farmers who are account holders and out of that 89.75 lakh have loan liability on them. On one hand the government will be extending the farm loan waiver only to farmers who have taken loan from 1 April, 2012 to 03 June, 2016 and on the other hand it is showing farmers who have availed loan between 2008 (after UPA government’s loan waiver) to 2012 too as beneficiaries, said Sawant. “The government is showing all these figures (89 lakh farmers) between 2012 and 2016, whereas this figure is of farmers between 2008 and 2016,” said Sawant. He added that with this trick, 7/12 extract of only three to four lakh farmers will be cleared and not of 40 lakh farmers. Sawant said that their party is pressing for complete loan waiver for all the farmers and will seek explanation on the statistics from the state government. Talking about the GST, Sawant said these are the same people who had opposed the GST move, proposed by UPA government and now these people are taking credit. “This is not the same GST UPA wanted to bring as everything is done in haste and common man is going to suffer,” he said. He added that positive change in the implementation of GST is needed.