Uncertainty over crop loan waiver to 2025-26 defaulters as Maharashtra govt asks banks for info on dues only till June 30, 2025

Kolhapur: Farmers' representatives questioned the state cooperative department's Dec 2, 2025, circular to all district central cooperative banks, barring Mumbai, seeking information on farmers with crop loan dues only till June 30, 2025, and farmers who regularly repaid their dues between 2020 and 2025, as part of an expert panel exercise to formulate a policy to fulfil the pre-2024 Assembly polls farm loan waiver promise.After a major farmers' agitation in Nagpur, govt appointed a panel of nine headed by a top bureaucrat and chief minister Devendra Fadnavis's chief economic adviser, Pravin Pardeshi, to formulate such a policy. Govt officials told TOI that, apart from the district central cooperative banks, similar information has also been sought from other banks that extended farm loans during this period.Earlier, in Oct, Fadnavis declared that state govt will announce a farm loan waiver on July 1, 2026. The farmers' delegation, in a meeting with govt, insisted on a June 30, 2026, deadline for the loan waiver. Their representatives are now wondering whether govt will waive the loan for the 2025-26 loan defaults. A crop loan is deemed a default if the farmer fails to repay it by June 30, ie. three months after the end of a financial year on March 31."Due to the poll promise, many farmers did not repay the loans. After the CM said govt would announce a loan waiver by June 30, 2026, most farmers who had earlier repaid loans regularly would have defaulted. The only remedy the govt will have is to grant a total loan waiver till June 30, 2026," said Ajit Navale, the general secretary of All-India Kisan Sabha's Maharashtra unit.Navale said in the monsoon last year, heavy rain caused significant damage to the kharif crops, and such farmers are bound to default on crop loans. "Such farmers, even if they paid the loans regularly, will not be eligible for crop loan waiver and may not get a penny as incentive, which will be an injustice to them," added Navale.The nine-member Pardeshi Panel was asked to submit a status report with recommendations by the end of April and, thereafter, govt will draft the policy with finer details, such as whether to cap the loan due amount similar to what was done in the past two loan waiver schemes, and how much incentive the regular farmers will get. Last month, deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar said that budgetary allocation for loan waiver regarding crop loans will be announced in the state's budget, slated to be declared in April.According to preliminary estimates by the state cooperative department, as on June 30, 2025, farmers across the state had crop loan dues worth Rs 35,000 crore. These dues pertain to the crop loans disbursed through district central cooperative banks."The district central cooperative banks were provided with the annexures to collect details on 86 counts to be filled in on the portal once the portal is ready by the MahaIT department. The process to collect the information is going on and will be completed in a month or so. The policy of loan waiver will be declared later by govt after studying the inputs," said a senior official from the state cooperation department, on the condition of anonymity.In 2017, CM Devendra Fadnavis launched the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Samman Yojana, and in 2019, then CM Uddhav Thackeray launched a loan waiver scheme named Mahatma Phule Shetkari Karjmukti Yojana.