Maharashtra Govt. to Cut Down Budget for Loan Waiver by Closing Down 22 Lakh 'Ghost Accounts'

In an unprecedented and shocking move for farmers in Maharashtra, the state is reportedly planning to cut down the budget allocation for farm loan waiver from Rs 34,200 crore to Rs 24,000 crore. The government’s move comes as a move to “save” Rs 10,200 crore pointing towards the 22 lakh “ghost accounts” in the beneficiary list.

“The emphasis on three-tier scrutiny has helped to weed out 22 lakh loan claimants whose names were wrongly displayed in the list provided by the State Level Bankers Committee,” the senior officer involved in the scrutiny was quoted as saying.

The loan waiver scheme, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Krishi Sanman Yojana’ (CSMKSY), was announced on June 24 this year after a series of protests by farmers and agricultural workers. To write off the entire loan of all the 1.36 crores farmers in the state under the scheme, the government would have to allocate Rs 1.14 lakh crore.

To stay away from this burden of Rs 1.14 lakh crore, the government enforced certain scrutinising criteria for beneficiaries under the CSMKSY scheme. As per the conditions, farmers with Rs 1.50 lakhs as debt would be entitled to waiver. If the amount of default is more than Rs. 1.50 lakhs, the said farmer would be required to deposit the entire beneficiary share of such default amount in the bank and only then the farmer will receive Rs. 1.50 lakhs from the government.

However, the State Level Bankers’ Committee coined the listed of total beneficiaries as 89 lakh. During the scrutiny, the government eliminated 22 lakh accounts from the list terming them as ghost accounts. This took down the total number of beneficiaries to 67 lakh.

To explain the ghost accounts, the officials recalled the 2008-09 loan waiver during the Congress-NCP regime and said, “In the absence of the mechanism to ascertain eligible beneficiaries, almost one-third of the total amount went to non-eligible candidates.”

Other than ghost accounts, the government officials pointed out certain technical issues due to the implementation of the digital process in the loan waiver scheme which was touted as the country's first Aadhaar-linked farm loan waiver. Even though the officials said that most eligible farmers would get the benefit by the end of December, the reports from the state show that the implementation of the farm loan waiver has hit a block due to the discrepancies in Aadhaar.

A leading national bank’s list to the government includes 253 farmers’ names with the identical Aadhaar number 100000000000. More than 50 farmers have the similar Aadhaar number 11111111111 too, the report says.

The data from the banks to the government shows that this is not an isolated case. Lakhs of farmers have identical Aadhaar numbers and savings account numbers. Meanwhile, the state government has not commented how they will tackle this issue.

Earlier, to avoid any fake accounts from getting the benefit of the loan waiver, the Maharashtra government maintained online registration by the farmers with their Aadhaar, the unique identification number.

As the debate on the loan waiver progresses on one side, the distressed farmers continue to take their lives in the state even after the implementation of the CSMKSY. 2,414 farmer suicides were reported in the state between January 1 and October 31 of this year, shows the data which was reported by the six divisional commissionerates across the state.

With the highest number of farmer suicides, the Amravati division which includes the five districts in Vidharbha witnessed 907 cases. The Aurangabad division in Marathwada reported 789 farmer suicides.

Along with the low agricultural prices and negligence from the side of government and the current technical snags in the loan waiver scheme simply aggravate the prevailing crisis in this region and the entire state.