Fadnavis, Patil, Pawar meet to discuss loan waiver

Mumbai: There are no signs of the government’s deliberations over the farmer loan waiver ending anytime soon. Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and revenue minister Chandrakant Patil met Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo Sharad Pawar in Delhi on Friday to discuss the details of the waiver.

This was second meeting between Mr Pawar and the state government. Mr Patil also met Maharashtra Congress chief Ashok Chavan and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray on Friday.

The Maharashtra government had declared a loan waiver for all farmers with certain parameters on June 11 in order to bring about an end to the farmers’ agitation in the state.

It also formed a high-power ministerial committee to study and finalise the details of the waiver.

Mr Patil leads this committee and it had met political leaders like Mr Pawar, Mr Chavan and Mr Thackeray in last 15 days.

Again on Friday, the government tried to convince the political leadership about the criteria for the waiver that it had decided on. According to Mr Patil, the government is ready to waive off the loans of farmers who failed to repay them by June 30, 2016.

At the same time, waived-off amount would be up to Rs 1 lakh and not any more.

However, other political parties including alliance partner Shiv Sena is not ready to accept this. Other party leaders have been calling for a complete loan waiver of farmers till June 30, 2017.

When high power ministerial group met to farmer’s representatives in last week, the similar demand comes from them and deadlock continued.

Writing off loans of all farmers and that too till June 30, 2017 could cost the exchequer up to Rs 55,000 crore.