Aadhaar mess up: Maharashtra govt freezes farm loan waiver to reverify beneficiaries

The government expects to complete the verification by November 15

The Maharashtra government has frozen its farm loan waiver to reverify beneficiaries after names of 100 farmers were found to be linked to a single Aadhaar number. 

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis convened a meeting with the State Level Banking Committee as well as the IT department to fix the problem and a new list of beneficiaries of the farm loan waiver scheme has been sent to banks on who have been authorised to release funds immediately.

The government expects to complete reverification by November 15. It had earlier aimed at disbursing money by October-end. 
 

When a loan waiver was announced by the UPA government in 2008, money was transferred to banks without any scrutiny and the implementation took 18 months, while his government released funds within three months, he said in a PTI report.

"However, we realised that around one lakh bank accounts had same Aadhar numbers. So the data had to be cleaned. But a new list has been released and we have deposited Rs 4,000 crore in the central account of ICICI Bank and they have been authorised to release the funds immediately," Fadnavis told PTI.

To a query on farmer suicides, Fadnavis said suicides are taking place for the last twenty years, and to prevent them, his government has increased the investment in the sector three-fold, which has led to the agriculture growth to reach 12.5 per cent from the earlier negative growth.

Applications of who have received the money won’t face scrutiny, Mungantiwar said.