Declare loan waiver beneficiaries' names or face protests:

The Shiv Sena, which shares power with BJP in Maharashtra, today said if the government did not declare the names of loan waiver beneficiaries within the next eight days, the party would hold strong protests.
The Sena's warning comes on the day it held "dhol bajao" (drum beating) protests outside the district central cooperative (DCC) banks across the state to demand the list of beneficiaries of the farm loan waiver announced by the state government.
"Farmers' suicides have taken place on a large scale in the state. There have been demands of a loan waiver from a long time. All political parties were against the BJP in the last Assembly session, which resulted in a complete shut-down of business," Sena minister Ramdas Kadam told reporters here.

He said Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had then assured Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray of a loan waiver for farmers. A party delegation, along with the CM even met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, but there was no help from the Centre.
"If a farmer does not have the money to repay loan instalments, bank officials go to their homes and play drums and post notices outside. Today, we did the same thing outside the DCC banks to ensure loan waiver decision is implemented and the list of beneficiaries is made public," he said.
"Within eight days we want details of farmers who got loan waiver benefits, got money in the One Time Settlement Scheme. We will see if the figures provided by the CM and the banks match. We do not distrust the CM, but only want to see if 89 lakh farmers have actually benefited," Kadam said.

If we do not get the list of beneficiaries from banks within eight days, strong protests would be held, he said.

Meanwhile, a release issued by the party said the protests were held at Nashik, Hingoli, Ratnagiri, Kolhapur, Buldhana, Ahmednagar, Beed, Thane, Dhule, Nandurbar, Satara, Manmad, Soygaon, Nagpur, Sangli, Mulshi, Pune, Dharashiv, Solapur, Washim, Manora taluka, Karanja, Jalgaon and Bhandara districts.
"Bank officials were asked to display the names of the beneficiaries on the doors of the banks," it said.
The Fadnavis government had last month announced the "historic" loan waiver of Rs 34,022 crore for farmers and subsequently laid down the eligibility criteria for availing it.

Last week, the government expanded the ambit of the loan waiver scheme to include even those farmers, who had taken loans after 2008.
Earlier, the loan waiver scheme titled the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Sanman Yojana, covered only those farmers who have the outstanding debts between 1 April 2012 and 30 June 2016.
The CM also extended the date to repay overdue of loans taken by farmers in the year 2016-2017 and who are regular payees from earlier 30 June 2017 to 31 July 2017.