90,000 applications for 2nd phase of waiver

Mumbai: The state government’s invitation of applications for the second phase of its farm loan waiver scheme has seen a good response, as farmers have submitted more than 90,000 applications. The government has extended the deadline for submission of forms to May 1.

The applicants are farmers who couldn’t apply earlier, and the exercise may increase the state’s financial burden further.

Chief minister Devendra Fadnavis announced a loan waiver to defaulter farmers whose loan amount is Rs 1.5 lakh as well as an incentive scheme for those farmers who were making repayments in 2017, and invited online applications for the same.

After getting an overwhelming response in the form of 77 lakh applications, the state proceeded to scrutinise the claims. After processing 67 lakh applications, which were qualified as per the norms, the benefit of waiver or incentive scheme was initiated for 47 lakh farmers out of which 8 lakh were under the one-time settlement scheme (OTS). Farmers have loans worth more than Rs 1.5 lakh would receive the benefit of the OTS scheme if they paid the balance amount. But there weren’t many takers for the same and only 23,000 farmers benefited from the OTS scheme by paying the remaining amount.

The state invited loan waiver applications in the second phase for farmers who could not file them in the first phase. But the state has received more than 90,000 applications till now, said senior officials of the cooperative department. The government may get more applications this time and further scrutiny will be done by Mahaonline, which comes under the government’s IT department.