1st list of crop loan beneficiaries today
Loan waiver to start, 20,000 will benefit in first round
Two months after announcing the loan waiver for farmers, the actual implementation of the scheme is slated to start from Monday, incidentally on the first day of the Budget Session of the State legislature.
The State government will release tomorrow the first list of 20,000 farmers selected under the loan waiver scheme.
They are all potential beneficiaries of the Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Shetkari Karjamukti Yojana.
‘‘Two villages from each district have been selected in the first list," chief minister Uddhav Thackeray told a press conference on Sunday.
Uddhav had announced the scheme last December under which he proposed to write off crop loan outstanding up to Rs 2 lakh until September 30, 2019.
Farmers, who had availed of crop loans up to Rs.2 lakh during the period April 1, 2015 to March 2019 and had not paid up to September 30, 2019, were eligible.
The state has also decided to spend Rs.10000 crore from its contingency fund to implement this scheme in the first phase till March 5.
Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who holds the Finance portfolio, said, "The selection of two villages from every district is aimed at testing the efficiency of our system. The money will be transferred directly into the accounts of beneficiaries in the banks".
Earlier, the money would go to the state cooperation commissioner who, in turn, would route it to the accounts of farmers via the district deputy registrar department.
Thackeray also said the second list of beneficiaries will be out by February 28 and the entire scheme will be concluded by April 14 this year.
"We have so far prepared a list of 35 lakh bank account holders who are likely to be eligible for the loan waiver scheme. Once details of these farmers are available, those accounts will be filtered further and finalised for the transfer of money," he said. Pawar also hit back at the erstwhile BJP government for claiming that 89 lakh farmers had benefited under their loan waiver scheme.
"Contrary to their claim, the final number of actual beneficiaries turned out to be quite less. We have avoided that (mess). Our departments worked together to come up with some filters to prepare a list of deserving beneficiaries," he added.