Do not charge interest on waived loan accounts: CM Fadnavis

Mumbai: Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has asked banks not to charge interest on the waived loan accounts after 31 July 2017. The state government had approved the benefit of loan waiver and incentive scheme to 47.88 lakh farmers in December last year. The banks are yet to deposit Rs 12,000 crore in 31.32 lakh bank accounts. The chief minister had taken a review meeting along with bankers and officials of the cooperative, IT and finance departments on Thursday. Cooperative minister Subhash Deshmukh, chief secretary Sumit Mullick, ACS SS and Sandhu, principle secretary Praveen Pardeshi were present at the meeting.

There are problems in the information submitted by farmers in their online application, which is not matching with the information given by the banks. So the chief minister has asked the banks to speed up the scrutiny process. There were complaints from the farmers that the banks were charging interest on loan account after 31 July 2017 because of delay by the government.

So Mr Fadnavis has directed banks not to charge the interest. Banks have uploaded information of 13.35 lakh loan accounts on portal. So Mr Fadnavis has asked banks to upload all the information about 21.65 lakh loan accounts in 3 days. He has also asked banks to give special offers to the farmers to avail of OTS (one time settlement) Scheme. The government has given a waiver to loans upto Rs 1.5 lakh. Farmers who have loans exceeding this amount, have to pay the remaining amount first to receive the scheme’s benefit. More than 8 lakh farmers have loans exceeding Rs 1.5 lakh.