23L more farmers ineligible for waiver: Sachin Sawant

The taluka-level committees constituted by the state government recently disqualified 23 lakh more farmers from the state's farm loan waiver scheme, alleged Sachin Sawant, Maharashtra Congress spokesperson on Thursday.

According to Sawant, now more than 50 lakh farmers will be deprived of the benefit of the farm loan waiver scheme due to various flimsy reasons. He said that only 46 lakh account holder farmers will get the benefit of loan waiver scheme against the earlier announcement of 94 lakh farmers by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. Sawant added that the government has approved a total amount of Rs 18,904 crore against the earlier claim of Rs 35,000 crore.

"The chief minister had earlier constituted the taluka committees to finalise the names of the farmers who were deprived of the first loan waiver list. However, rather than including the yellow list farmers in the green list, these committees recently disqualified all the left out 23 lakh farmers. This is very unfortunate," said Sawant. "It shows the mentality of the government. They do not want to help the farmers by waiving off their loan. So far only 7 to 8 per cent farmers received the actual benefit of the loan waiver. While on the other hand, BJP minister Sambhaji Nilengekar Patil's got the waiver of Rs 51 crore against his total loan of Rs 76 crore. The same law and justice should be meted out to farmers of our state. The BJP minister got the huge benefit while the farmers are deprived of their legitimate rights," added Sawant.

He alleged that the BJP-led government had no intentions to help the farmers.