Pune: The state govt would release the preliminary list of farmers eligible for the farm loan waiver on the birth anniversary of former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar on Wednesday, after twice missing the deadline for the implementation of the scheme.“Ajit Pawar’s birth anniversary is on Wednesday and to mark that occasion, we are trying to come out with the first list of farmers eligible for the loan waiver. The cooperation minister Babasaheb Patil is working on that list,” chief minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Tuesday.Following huge crop losses because of floods in most of the districts of the state last year, farmers’ outfits and opposition have been demanding that the state govt provide a farm loan waiver to all farmers. Accepting the demand, the state govt announced the Punyasholk Ahilyadevi Holkar farm loan waiver scheme.The scheme was to be rolled out before June 30. The govt announced a second deadline of July 5 for the scheme’s implementation after missing the first, but it could not be met either.State agriculture minister Dattatray Bharne on Tuesday said the benefit under the scheme would be passed on to farmers before July 30. “The loan waiver scheme will bring much relief to maximum farmers of the state. It is true that two deadlines were announced, but we wanted to finalise the list based on the details provided by the central govt. We have received the data from the IT department of the farmers who file IT returns, and those farmers will not be included in the list,” Bharne said.“The preliminary list is expected to be out on Wednesday, the birth anniversary of Ajit Pawar and also the birthday of chief minister Fadnavis. The scheme will surely be rolled out before July 30,” the agriculture minister said.The opposition and the farmers’ outfits claimed that they would scrutinise the list of the eligible farmers to find out if the govt had missed out on any names. Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana founder Raju Shetti said, “Farmers have trust issues with the govt. It failed to adhere to the deadline on two occasions, and we are not sure if it will actually start the implementation of the scheme before July 30. Once the govt releases the list, we will go through it carefully to find out if some farmers were deliberately omitted from the list.”
