Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Wednesday promised a complete waiver of farm loans in the state, PTI reported. Thackeray’s announcement came a day after the Shiv Sena-led government formally approved a scheme that would write off short-term loans up to Rs 2 lakh, taken between April 1, 2015, and March 31, 2019.
“We have waived loans worth Rs 2 lakh [per farmer] as immediate relief to cultivators,” the chief minister said at an event at the Vasantdada Sugar Institute in Pune. “But we will also make sure that their entire [farm] loan is waived.”
Thackeray also said that Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar had taught people how to increase farm productivity and how to form a government “with less member of MLAs in the legislative assembly”. Pawar was present at the gathering.
The chief minister criticised Bharatiya Janata Party leader Devendra Fadnavis’s remarks that it was the single-largest party in the Maharashtra Assembly. The state’s ruling Shiv Sena, Congress, and NCP alliance was formed after former allies BJP and Sena could not reach a power-sharing agreement following Assembly elections in October. The Shiv Sena had won 56 seats, and along with the NCP’s 54 MLAs and the Congress’s 44, it was able to form a government.
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