Maharashtra’s ‘zero suicide mission’: Govt plans additional tax to help farmers

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Rejecting the Opposition’s demand for a loan waiver aggregating Rs 16,000 crore, Fadnavis said in the assembly such a waiver would be of no help as 60 per cent of the farmers were still outside of the credit disbursement coverage. Rather, he said, the government’s policy decisions to restructure loans with zero interest rates and repayment over the next five years had led to a rise in the number of farmers availing bank loans. “If we were to go in for a complete loan waiver, only 25 lakh farmers in Vidarbha and Marathwada would benefit. But there would be 35 lakh equally deserving farmers who would not be covered under the loan waiver due to low credit disbursement,” said the CM.

According to him, the root cause of the agrarian crisis in Maharashtra was the mismanagement of district cooperative banks, which had benefited financial institutions in Western Maharashtra at the cost of Vidarbha and Marathwada. The state has already warned of criminal action against banks refusing loans to farmers.