M’shtra suspends farm loan waiver after Aadhaar-bank account goof-up

Mumbai, October 27 : The Maharashtra government has suspended disbursal of funds under the farm loan waiver programme after several bank accounts of beneficiaries were found to have been linked to a single Aadhaar identification number.
The decision to suspend the farm loan waiver programme was taken in order to prevent disbursal of funds to holders of bogus accounts who may have availed of farm loans from various agencies before defaulting on them. “We are re-verifying all the information submitted by farmers who applied to avail of the farm loan waiver,” a state government official said.Preliminary inquiries revealed that in some cases as many has 100 bank accounts were linked to the same Aadhaar identification number.Many of these accounts belonged to small co-operative banks.least one lakh out of the total 8.5 lakh bank account holders who are eligible for the farm loan waiver were found to have multiple Aadhaar numbers.Officials feel that the error may have crept in during data entry by bank employees.The Maharashtra government was to disburse Rs 4,000 crore in the first phase by Diwali and the rest of the Rs 35,000 crore loan waiver by the end of November.Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis told reporters here that the entire list of farmers eligible for the farm loan waiver would be re-verified by November 15 and the first phase of the loan waiver rolled out soon after.