Congress alleges that more than 50% of farmers excluded from loan waiver

Maharashtra state Congress Committee President Harshwardhan Sapkal alleged here on Wednesday that the Fadnavis Government has deliberately excluded more than 50 percent of Maharashtra’s farmers from the loan waiver scheme cleared recently.

“The so-called loan waiver scheme announced by the BJP-led Mahayuti government led by Devendra Fadnavis is merely a sham. Through a play on words, the scheme has imposed numerous rules, conditions and eligibility barriers, deliberately excluding more than 50 percent of MAharashtra’s farmers. This is a cruel joke on the farming community. We demand that the government should make the state’s farmers debt-free”.

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Speaking about the farmer loan waiver scheme, Sapkal said that the BJP-led Mahayuti government’s loan waiver is only applicable to farmers who received loans between April 1, 2019 and March 31, 2025 as well as farmers whose loans have now become outstanding.

“Earlier, many farmers took loans and are unable to obtain new crop loans due to their outstanding loans. All such farmers have been excluded from this scheme. According to one estimate, the number of such farmers is twice the number of farmers receiving loan waiver benefits. Therefore, all outstanding farmers should be extended the benefit of this loan waiver scheme,” Sapkal demanded.

“Farmers who previously benefited under the ‘Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Shetkari Samman Yojana’ implemented by the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government will not have their current outstanding loans fully waived. They will receive only a benefit of Rs 50,000. This scheme of the Fadnavis government is limited only to crop loans and restructured loans. Many farmers took loans to build wells, pipelines as well as purchase cows and buffaloes, which are still outstanding. All such farmers will also be excluded from this scheme. This is injustice and a cruel joke on farmers,” Sapkal said.

“The Fadnavis government has completely ignored even those farmers who have been regularly repaying their loans. To receive the incentive, farmers who regularly repay their loans must have taken crop loans in any two of the three years of 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 and repay it on time. Also, it is mandatory to repay crop loans taken in 2025-26 and 2026-27 on time. Only then will such farmers receive an incentive of Rs 50,000. This amount is also extremely insignificant,” Sapkal said.

“The BJP government is anti-farmer and is making a lot of noise about loan waivers for farmers. The reality is that the aim of the Mahayuti government is to keep as many farmers as possible deprived of loan waivers. Even before this, the Fadnavis government had deprived lakhs of farmers from the benefits by imposing many rules in the loan waiver scheme implemented with wide publicity,” Sapkal said.

“Just like 80 lakh women were deprived of benefits in the name of eligibility under the ‘Laadki Bahin’ scheme, lakhs of farmers have been kept out of the loan waiver by trapping them in rules and conditions,” Maharashtra state Congress Committee President Harshwardhan Sapkal said.