New list of loan waiver beneficiaries sent to banks: Devendra Fadnavis

A new list of beneficiaries of the farm loan waiver scheme has been sent to banks who have been authorised to release funds immediately, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said.

"The loan waiver scheme which we have announced is the most transparent scheme ever in the country. Every farmer was registered and their bio-metric registrations were done. In just 45 days, we registered 1.05 crore farmers," Fadnavis said, speaking at a media event here.

When a loan waiver was announced by the UPA government in 2008, money was transferred to banks without any scrutiny and the implementation took 18 months, while his government released funds within three months, he said.

"However, we realised that around one lakh bank accounts had same Aadhar numbers. So the data had to be cleaned. But a new list has been released and we have deposited Rs 4,000 crore in the central account of ICICI Bank and they have been authorised to release the funds immediately," Fadnavis said.

To a query on farmer suicides, Fadnavis said suicides are taking place for the last twenty years, and to prevent them, his government has increased the investment in the sector three-fold, which has led to the agriculture growth to reach 12.5 per cent from the earlier negative growth.

"Farmers' distress is due to a legacy, which will take time to improve. Congress had been ruling right from the time Maharashtra was formed, and 80 per cent of farming was done on dry land. In three years we have brought 21 lakh hectares of land under irrigation," Fadnavis said.