Banks have provided lakhs of identical Aadhaar and savings account numbers of farmers to the state government. For the Fadnavis government that wishes to expedite the disbursal of loan waiver money to 77 lakh farmers covering 56 lakh families across the state, this poses a serious hindrance.
As per the data, one of the farmer's Aadhaar number is
111111110157 and his bank account number is 11111111111, while the other farmer's Aadhaar and bank account number is also the same.
Such cases of bogus Aadhaar and saving bank account numbers that have been provided to the state government by national banks, district cooperative banks and commercial banks are prevalent across Maharashtra. More than 50 farmers have the Aadhaar number 11111111111.
According to a report, the state government while attempting online registration for loan waiver implementation, discovered that names of over 100 farmers were found to be linked to a single Aadhaar number.
Principal Secretary (Information and
Technology) V K Gautam said he is “perplexed” to see several thousand
farmers having same Aadhaar and savings account numbers. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had called for an urgent meeting with bankers to address the issue.
These are the issues that will have major adverse impacts on the farmers’ livelihoods. Any farmer with a loan would be considered for a waiver of up to Rs 1.5 lakh irrespective of the size of his/her land holding. Whereas, in case of farmers who have cleared their dues, the government offers an incentive of only Rs 25,000.
In this case, Maharashtra government had earlier
asked farmers to register online for loan waivers with their Aadhaar
numbers. They said that it would avoid any duplicate and fake accounts
to get the loan waiver benefit because Aadhaar is a ‘unique’
identification number.
The state government had last week released a sum of Rs 4,000 crore under the first phase of the over Rs.34,000 crore farm loan waiver scheme. They wanted to complete the process by October-end.
The entire premises of Aadhaar was helping the poor. It was supposed to make availing social welfare benefits smoother and more transparent. However, the actuality is immensely contrasting.