Executing farm-loan waiver scheme tough for government

Mumbai: Implementation of the farm-loan waiver scheme is going to be tough for the government as a basic process of conducting hearings in every village to confirm the beneficiaries has not been completed yet. The process may take another two months to get over which will delay distribution of loan waiver amount.

The hearings at villages involved the reading out of the beneficiaries (Chavadi Vachan)’s names. A few thousand villages had elections last week and a code of conduct that was implemented there delayed the process.  The government officials have hinted that it might take two more months to complete the process.

More than 50 lakh farmers have applied for the state government’s farm loan waiver scheme in the last month. The government has already started scrutiny of the farmers’ application to verify if they were eligible for it. As part of the process, the government officials are supposed to go to each village and read out names of the eligible farmers for the schemes. They also make them understand about implementation of the loan waiver.

However, 2,974 village bodies went for a poll on Monday, which were having code of conduct. “This prevented the officials to conduct the reading the list of beneficiaries. The process got delayed further. Now it will resume after Diwali celebration,” an official from the cooperative and marketing department said. These 3,884 gram panchayats are spread over 18 districts in Marathwada, Vidarbha and North Maharashtran regions.

The government had earlier decided on October 1 for giving the cheques to the farmers. However, the scrutiny is yet to get over. Also, there was no statement from the government about 14,000 farmers in Mumbai that had applied for the loan waiver. “The loan from the year 2009 has been considered and the concept of Aadhar card came after that. It is possible that the loan was taken for agriculture purposes but the address on the Aadhar card is from Mumbai,” the official said.

The government has narrowed the criteria this time for the loan waiver by applying the income bar. Also, presidents and vice presidents of cooperative sugar factories, cotton mills, district cooperative banks, milk federations, APMCs as well as those holding shops under the Mumbai Shops and Establishment Act with income of more than `10 lakh are not eligible for this.