MUMBAI: After opposition outrage over stringent conditions attached to the farm loan waiver scheme, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said a sub-committee has been formed to address the lacunae in the scheme’s implementation.
CM Devendra Fadnavis said the government is ready to resolve farmers’ complaints related to the farm loan waiver scheme. He said the committee will be headed by the Chief Minister along with the two Deputy Chief Ministers.
“As the farm loan waiver scheme execution starts, we will come to know the issues and these issues will be addressed by the sub-committee. We are very much open to accepting the issues and resolve them,” CM said.
He further said there are some farmers who are regular defaulters and are attempting to seek benefits from each farm loan waiver scheme.
“We decided to put some cap for those farmers who regularly default. These farmers do not repay the crop loan on time and wait for the farm loan waiver to waive off their crop loan.
Therefore, these regular defaulter farmers will be given the benefit, but that would be limited. The reason, this move will help the cooperative banks,” Fadnavis said.
He said the farm loan waiver scheme has not been implemented with any political intentions or with elections in mind.
“The Lok Sabha and state polls are in 2029, and we would have announced this farm loan waiver in 2028, but we did not do that and started implementing it. Besides, there was no major demand for farm loan scheme by opposition till they announced it,” Fadnavis said.
The Maharashtra government has announced the Punyashlok Ahilyadevi Holkar Shetkari Karjmukti Yojana 2026, which will benefit 58 lakh farmers, with the total cost of the farm loan waiver estimated at Rs 36,585 crore.
There are a total of 65 lakh bank account-holding farmers who have taken crop loans, of which 58 lakh are eligible under the current waiver scheme.
Under the scheme, the state government has waived crop loans of up to Rs two lakh. Regular defaulters will be eligible for a benefit of Rs 50,000, but they will first have to repay their loan and then receive the remaining benefit later, while farmers who regularly repay crop loans will be given Rs 50,000 as an incentive.