Final decision on loan waiver by June next year: CM after meeting protesting farmer leaders

“We had promised farm loan waiver in our election manifesto. We are committed to the same. We have formed a high level committee headed by MITRA CEO Praveen Pardeshi which will give us the report by April 1 ( in six months). Based on that, a decision will be taken on this by June 30, 2026,” said Fadnavis after the meeting.

The Chief Minister maintained that at present it was important to ensure that the money is deposited directly into the back accounts of farmers suffering from the floods for the upcoming Rabi season.

He said that around Rs 6,000 crore of the Rs 8,500 crore released have already been deposited into the accounts of farmers and the process of releasing Rs 11,000 crore has begun as approved by the Cabinet.

“It is true that the state already has financial burden. The government is in financial trouble. But we will find a way out of it,” he said, adding that despite financial constraints the state government announced one of the biggest relief packages for farmers suffering from the floods.

The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court had on Wednesday taken suo-moto notice of an agitation of farmers under Kadu’s leadership blocking the National Highway 44 (also known as Wardha road) on the outskirts of Nagpur over farm loan waiver and other demands.
The court directed to vacate the road as the ‘Maha Elgar Morcha’ called by farmer organisations in the state and led by Kadu resulted in a traffic jam of over 20 kilometers outside Nagpur.

Even as the police reached the agitation spot on Wednesday night, the protesters refused to move. Kadu, along with farmer leaders Raju Shetti, Mahadev Jankar, Ajit Nawale met Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in Mumbai on Thursday evening.

Apart from farm loan waiver, the demands are 20 per cent subsidy on minimum support price (MSP) to agricultural commodities, a subsidy of Rs 5 lakh to households in rural areas by applying the same criteria as in cities, covering all expenses from sowing to harvesting through Maharashtra Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and cancellation of Nagpur-Goa Shaktipeeth highway project.

Hours before the meeting, the state government set up a nine-member committee to be headed by Praveen Pardeshi, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of MITRA and Chief Economic Advisor of Fadnavis.

The committee is tasked to submit a report to suggest short term and long term measures to bring change in farmers’ lives by releasing them from the debt trap.

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