Maharashtra Government issued government resolution on loan waiver

The Maharashtra government issued the Government Resolution (GR) on 28 June 2017 for the farm loan waiver of Rs 34022 crore announced by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis last week.

The resolution said, loans of all indebted farmers whose accounts went into default until 30 June 2016, will be waived off with a cap of Rs 1.5 lakh per farmer.

It said, the farmers who have paid off their outstanding loans after 30 June 2016, will get a blanket help of Rs 25000 from the state government. The GR said, the farmers are entitled to get the benefit only once.

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Persons with an annual turnover of over Rs 10 lakh and those who are registered under VAT or Service Tax will be ineligible for loan waiver. Retired persons excluding ex-servicemen whose monthly pension is Rs 15000 or more are also not eligible.

The GR says that the farmers, who have more than Rs 1.5 lakh debt, will get the benefit of loan waiver after they pay their remaining amount of debt along with interest. It also says that woman farmer would be given priority in this scheme.

Besides, the state government has also decided to form a cabinet sub-committee for implementation of the scheme. It also said that the finance department will issue a separate note on guidelines.

Comment: Reports suggests that the criteria are similar to the ones which were declared in the previous week of June 2017. The mentioned criteria were opposed by the farmers’ organisations. It seems that the implementation of similar criteria, which was opposed by the organisations, would trigger fresh agitations in the state.