Sharad Pawar slams BJP for supporting recapitalisation of banks

Govt tying up a plan to pump in Rs 80 billion into PSBs to help them tide over the loans that have turned into NPAs

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar took a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday, saying its government at the Centre had funds for recapitalisation of banks, but was unwilling to support the farm loan waiver announced by its government in Maharashtra.

Speaking at Solapur, he said, “Some people (in the Union government) were unhappy with the state government’s loan waiver scheme for farmers. Then, what is the source of the Rs 800 billion that the Centre is putting into banks?” The former Union agriculture minister further demanded the state government come up with a complete farm loan waiver scheme, instead of the current one where the loan of just one member per family was eligible for waiver.

Attacking the Centre, he said the country’s growth rate had dipped and that both industrial and agricultural production had slowed down.

The Union government is tying up a plan to pump in Rs 80 billion into the public sector banks to help them tide over the loans that have turned into non-performing assets (NPAs).

The Maharashtra government had, in June last year, announced a Rs 340-billion farm-loan waiver scheme and claimed that it would benefit more than five million farmers in the state.

However, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said around the same time that the Union government would not bear the cost of this loan waiver.