813 Mumbai fishermen in govt’s loan beneficiary list of farmers

VERIFICATION ORDER CM asks officials to investigate, Cong criticises wrong info

The state government late on Monday night came out with the first list of farmers who will benefit from the unprecedented Rs 34,000-crore loan waiver scheme. The 813 farmers in the first list are all from Mumbai.

However, when questions were raised on how farmers were identified from the concrete city, the government clarified that the beneficiaries were fishermen.

Post midnight on Monday, the government-appointed State Level Banking Committee (SLBC) released the short listed the 813 beneficiaries.

Sambhaji Deshmukh, minister for cooperatives, said of the total, 694 fishermen are from Mumbai city and 119 from suburban. They too will get benefit of the Rs 34,000crore ‘Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojana’ loan waiver scheme. “They have borrowed loans from commercial and nationalised banks and the amount of loan is around Rs two crores only,” he said. Outstanding debts up to Rs. 1.50 lakh will be waived off for these fishermen, the minister added.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has also asked officials to thoroughly verify the ‘Mumbai farmers’ who will benefit from the loan waiver.

According to Damodar Tandel, a leader of the fishermen, said they too had asked for their loans to be written off. He had demanded that the state must include the fishermen in the loan waiver package as number are marginal and the amount of the outstanding loan is too small.

SLBC had submitted a total 36,10,296 eligible farmers to the state government for the loan waiver. The highest number of 2.49 lakh eligible farmers are from Buldhana district followed by Yeotmal and Beed districts. After loan waiver for farmers, fishermen too had raised their voice and demanded the same package for them.

“A committee under Minister Subhash Deshmukh will be formed to implement the loan waiver scheme. Farmers will be asked to approach banks to get benefits under the scheme. They have to file an affidavit saying that they are eligible for the waiver,” said Chandrakant Patil, head of the ministerial group on loan waiver.

Patil further said, “The government will not verify the affidavit. The banks will deposit the money directly into the account of beneficiary.” When asked, if farmer files false information through the affidavit, what action will be taken, Patil replied that generally neighbours and villagers complain to the government on whether a specific farmer is really beneficiary or not.

“If it is found in a later period that the affidavit was wrong, the amount will be recovered from the particular farmer,” the minister for revenue said. He also claimed that the amount Rs. 34,000 crore will certainly come down because of various other reasons.

Cooperatives department said SLBC’s figures are yet to be verified by government.

Meanwhile, Sachin Sawant, spokesperson of MPCC demanded that state to apologise for give wrong information about beneficiaries of the loan waiver.