At least 10 lakh bank accounts of farmers are fake, says Maharashtra minister

Maharashtra Revenue Minister Chandrakant Patil has said that at least 10 lakh bank accounts of farmers are fake and will not get any benefit of the loan waiver.

The minister further claimed that most of these accounts were earlier opened by banks or credit societies for siphoning off the loan amount.

When asked about the use of software for loan waiver assessment and farmers' application, Patil said, "As per the previous assessment, some 89 lakh farmers were expected to benefit out of the loan waiver scheme.

"Now, we have realised that some 10 lakh bank accounts of farmers are fake, most of them opened by banks or credit societies for siphoning off the loan amount. Now, with this new software, we are able to detect the true farmers who actually have some agricultural land and have availed some loan."

"The fake accounts have some information missing such as actual land area, supporting documents, bank account among others. As the software demands detailed information, we came to know that some 10 lakh bank accounts are fake hence they would not get any loan waiver benefits," Patil told PTI today.

Patil said that this issue could be politicised and government may face another round of criticism over loan waiver issue.

He said, "Earlier, such fake accounts were regularly used for availing loan. With state government's intervention, we want to fix such leakages in our system. Hence we have taken such tough decision. The government is keen on helping genuine farmers."

The Maharashtra government had in June announced a farm loan waiver of Rs 34,000 crore.