Mumbai: Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant on Thursday criticised the government for the alleged whittling down of the list of farmers eligible for loan waiver relief.
“There were 47,46,222 farmers on the ‘green list’ declared in January. An amount of Rs 23,102 crore was allocated for them. But by April 3, one lakh farmers were again removed and the monetary allocation is down by almost Rs 5,000 crore,” Mr Sawant said.
He demanded that the government clarify the chopping of the list from the One-Time Settlem-ent (OTS) scheme as well as the incentive scheme within the loan-waiver scheme.
He alleged that the government deleted more than half the number of potential beneficiary farmers since the initial announcement. There is now only 40 lakh of the original 89 lakh potential beneficiaries left on the list, he added.
“The state government had promised loan waiver to 89 lakh farmers on June 24 (last year). But it put much stringent conditions that only 77 lakh could apply for the loan relief scheme. Out of them, the government approved only 69 lakh. So 20 lakh farmers
got ignored,” Mr Sawant said.
