Maharashtra begins rollout of Farmer Loan Waiver Scheme; first 500 beneficiaries announced

M.

The Maharashtra government started rolling out the Punyashlok Ahilyadevi Holkar Shetkari Karjamukti scheme on Wednesday, July 23, 2025, and announced the first 500 beneficiaries on the occasion of the birth anniversary of the late Ajit Pawar, Deputy Chief Minister of the State.

A list of 500 eligible beneficiaries selected from six districts has been published. According to the statement made by the CMO, a message (SMS) regarding Aadhaar authentication will be sent to the beneficiaries from their mobile phones.

The said lists will be published in the Gram Panchayat at the village level, various executive cooperative society offices and relevant bank branches. Farmers are required to verify their Aadhaar based on their Aadhaar number or the specific number allocated to farmers in the list.

Punyashlok Ahilyadevi Holkar Shetkari Karjamukti scheme, 2026 was announced on June 2. The program’s criteria were partially revised on July 15. For implementation of the loan waiver and one-time settlement (OTS) element of the said programme, a total of 53 banks, including 30 District Central Cooperative Banks, 12 Nationalized Banks and other private banks in the state, have uploaded the information of farmer loan accounts on the portal developed by MahaIT for this programme. The information of all accounts of District Central Cooperative Banks was verified by the auditors of the Cooperative Department in accordance with the State Agriculture Department.

The Potential Linked Scheme for provision of crop credit prepared by NABARD for the year 2026-27 is valued at ₹ 95,373 crore. The crop loan allocation target for the state is ₹75449 crore as per the District Credit Scheme compiled by the State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC).

Apart from the said annual target, ₹ 52822 crore has been allocated for Kharif loans and ₹ 22627 crore for Rabi loans with a target of providing loans to 64 lakh farmers this year.

Bank wise allocation is as follows: ₹26865 crore allocated to District Central Cooperative Banks, ₹33588 crore allocated to Public Sector Banks, Rs. ₹9923 crore to Private and Microfinance Banks and ₹5073 crore to Rural Banks.

The entire above process will be completed by July 31 for eligible beneficiaries of all District Central Cooperative Banks in the state. Next, the process of benefit transfer to the eligible beneficiaries of all commercial banks will be discussed.