Farmers: debt relief not within easy reach

A National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) official said a negligible number of farmers took advantage of this. “The percentage of farmers who repaid loans to cooperative banks would probably be in single digits. We are collecting the data,” he said,adding that this was the feedback.

Eligible farmers also wanted their debts to be written off. The debt waiver scheme,announced at the same time,focused on small and marginal farmers and benefited over 46.5 lakh farmers,of whom over 2.59 lakh were from Pune.

“They have taken these measures keeping in mind the polls. This will benefit neither banks nor farmers. The directors of the District Cooperative Banks are all members of the Congress and the NCP,” said Vinod Tawade,BJP state general secretary.

State Congress general secretary Sanjay Dutt said a dejected and frustrated opposition is politicising the issue. The budget has also proposed a task force for Maharashtra to aid large numbers of farmers left out of the debt waiver scheme because they had taken loans from moneylenders.

“This is an important development,specifically for Vidarbha and Marathwada where most farmers are in the clutches of moneylenders,” said Prabhakar Deshmukh,state agriculture commissioner.