india

Updated: Apr 19, 2018 21:11 IST

They clearly weren’t eligible for it and they, of all people, would know that best. But that didn’t prevent more than 24,000 government officials from applying for the Maharashtra government’s Rs 34,000 crore crop loan waiver scheme.

“More than one lakh applications were filed by people who do not comply with some or other criteria. Surprisingly, 24,221 of them were state government officials,” a senior government official said on Thursday.

Maharashtra revenue minister Chandrakant Patil had recently stated that the names of some government officials were found in the list of loan waiver applicants, and these names were removed. And, this necessitated more scrutiny, thereby delaying the implementation of the scheme.

While announcing the scheme, the government had made it clear that its employees -- even if they are involved in farming -- will not get the benefit of the loan waiver.

That message doesn’t seem to have sunk in.

Of the rejected applications, 9,262 in fact came from employees of the agency implementing the scheme, the cooperation department, the official cited above said.

Overall, around 1.30 lakh applications were rejected as they didn’t meet some criteria or other, the official said.

“One of the basic criteria was that the beneficiary should not have any other major source of income apart from agriculture, and most of the rejected applicants had other sources of income, such as shops, government or semi-government jobs,” the official said.

Elected representatives, too, weren’t immune to the lure of the loan waiver.

The scrutiny committee found 14 cases where the applicant’s spouse was a member of a Zilla Parishad or was an elected representative, the official pointed out.