Only Rs 5,141 crore of farm loan waiver amount disbursed

Mumbai: Admitting that there has been a delay in disbursing the farm loan scheme waiver amount, the state government on Tuesday said that nine lakh farmers have received Rs 5,141 crore so far. It also claimed that 40 lakh more farmers will get their loan waiver amount in next eight-nine days.

The state government had declared loan waiver of Rs 34,000 crore for the farmers and had said that approximately 89 lakh would benefit from the scheme. So far, the disbursement of the funds has remained very low. “We have disbursed Rs 5,141 crore to nine lakh farmers,” relief and rehabilitation minister Chandrakant Patil said. Asked about the delay, the minister said that the government is working cautiously on the distribution of the funds.

“The previous government had messed up everything in the waiver declared in 2009. We do not want to repeat the mistakes, and hence we are disbursing the amount very carefully,” he said.

The story so far

The waiver has been a serious issue for the past six months. At first, opposition parties held a statewide Sangharsh Yatra in April. Then on June 1, farmers across the state went on strike. Under pressure from the opposition and the farmers, the state declared rs 34,022 crore loan waiver for 89 lakh farmers on June 21. The state asked farmers to file an online application for the loan waiver. It was earlier scheduled to complete the implementation of the waiver before September 15. However, the state has said that it will start distributing money to farmers from October 1.