Maharashtra: Digital process unearths 13.5 lakh ghost accounts

The chief minister, citing examples to show discrepancies in the working of financial institutions, said, “Take the case of the Union Bank. In the first list, the number of loan accounts of farmers was 6.48 lakh. In the revised list, which was subjected to scrutiny, the number declined to 1.34 lakh.”

The discrepancies stretched in varying degrees across national, district and commercial banks, he said.
Fadnavis said that steps have been taken to ensure that the loan waiver disbursement is not hampered and genuine farmers get their dues. “The IT department will coordinate with banks to streamline the process and ensure each and every farmer gets the loan waiver,” he said.

Justifying the online process for loan waiver and three-tier validation, the chief minister said, “The larger objective of the entire exercise is to provide funds to truly deserving farmers.” Denying that there has been a delay in disbursement of loan waiver, he said, “The official announcement was in the month of July. And the first phase of loan disbursement of Rs 4,000 crore for 8.40 lakh farmers was deposited in banks in October. However, discrepancies led to further validation.”

Terming the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanmaan Yojana as historic, the chief minister said, “The loan waiver is upto Rs 1.5 lakh irrespective of the size of land holding. Even those who have not defaulted have been provided an incentive of Rs 25,000.”

Enumerating other measures taken to benefit farmers, Fadnavis said, “For the first time, we have adopted the online process for procurement of soyabean and cotton from farmers. This will help check corruption and human manipulations and help deserving farmers.” The purchase centres have already started functioning. Promising more reforms to make agriculture sustainable and double the farmers’ income, he said, “The investment in 2017-18 was the highest at Rs 73,440 crore. A year ago (2016-17), the investment was Rs 56,576 crore.” The turnaround from negative (-4 per cent) growth to positive (+12.5 per cent) growth in just three years in the agriculture and allied sectors corroborates this, he said.

The government spent Rs 1,734 crore to provide power connections to 1,38,234 farmers. Whereas, 82,456 electricity connections were given for agricultural pumps for Vidarbha farmers, and 55,770 to Marathwada farmers. Under the food security scheme, Rs 1,400 crore was spent to help 68 lakh farmers across the state. Free medical treatment for 4.5 lakh farmers incurred an expenditure of Rs 600 crore in 14 drought-hit districts. To provide weather updates to farmers, 2,065 weather stations have been sanctioned of which 1,600 have been installed.

Through group farming model introduced to make agriculture economically more feasible, 1,200 groups were formed comprising 40,762 farmers. Under the project, at least 20 farmers with cumulative landholding of 100 acres come together for farming. But each farmer should not have landholding of more than 10 acres. In three organic farming has been done in 20,346 hectares of land.