NAGPUR: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today admitted in the Legislative Assembly here that his government made some mistakes in the implementation of the Rs 34,022 crore farm loan waiver scheme.
He assured that the BJP-led government would ensure that every eligible farmer got benefit of the scheme.
Opposition parties have raised several questions over the scheme, entitled `Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojana', under which outstanding farm loans of up to Rs 1.50 lakh are being waived.
Farmers who have repaid their loans regularly will get a rebate upto Rs 25,000, as per the scheme announced by Fadnavis on June 24 following a farmers' strike.
However, the government faced some embarrassment as the data provided by banks and the information in the applications submitted by farmers through a government portal didn't tally.
"It is true that we made some mistakes. But we have now overcome them. The state government has so far transferred money to 22,46,000 accounts," Fadnavis said.
In all, 43,16,768 accounts were validated by the government, of which 28,97,704 accounts are eligible for the loan waiver, while remaining 14 lakh are eligible for (rebate) reward scheme, the chief minister said.
The government also faced criticism when it hurriedly distributed certificates of being beneficiaries of loan waiver to farmers. Defending it, the chief minister said the CAG report on the 2008 loan waiver scheme of the Congress-led UPA government had recommended that such certificates be issued.
Some "over-enthusiastic district collectors" gave away certificates to many farmers (when some of them hadn't actually got the loan waiver), the CM said.
"The state government was under some pressure as we wanted to implement the loan waiver before Diwali. We thus made mistakes, but now corrections are being made," the said.
"The previous loan waiver scheme of the Union government had some loopholes. Those were misused by banks and some individuals. The cumulative amount of irregularly waived loans was Rs 4,000 crore for Maharashtra, 39.43 per cent of the total scheme size for the state, Fadnavis said.
"The CAG reported that 13.5 per cent of eligible farmers did not get the benefit (of the UPA scheme). Some 8.5 per cent of accounts in the state were non-eligible.
"One of the banks gave us a data of 6.50 lakh accounts of farmers who could be eligible....only 1.50 lakh of these accounts were found to be authentic....We found some ghost accounts and we filtered them out through our Aadhar-based system," said Fadnavis.
Former chief minister and senior Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan demanded details of such ghost accounts, but the chief minister had left the House by then.
Speaking to reporters later, Chavan said, "It was the Union Bank of India, which has been named by the CM at a function earlier. If the bank has five lakh ghost accounts, then it should be probed thoroughly. If the findings are serious, then the state should take legal action. The CM himself has used the word ghost account on the floor of the House, hence there should be a thorough probe."