Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrakant Patil on Wednesday took a dig at Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, accusing him of taking a U-turn on farm loan waiver promise.
Thackray had promised a complete loan waiver, Patil said while speaking to reporters in Pune.
“But he announced loan waiver up to only Rs 2 lakh. We know that there are some limitations. But now he must have understood the difference between announcement and implementation,” Patil said and quipped, “U-turn will now be known as Uddhav-ji Thackeray turn”.
Thackeray had on Saturday announced a loan waiver for farmers who owe up to Rs 200,000 to banks till September 30 this year.
“This scheme, called ‘Mahatma Jyotirao Phule Farm Loan Waiver Scheme’ will be implemented from March 2020 onwards. The upper limit for the loan waiver will be Rs 2 Lakh,” Thackeray told media persons.
The much-anticipated and hotly-debated announcement was made on the last day of the winter session of Maharashtra Legislature and was welcomed by the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) alliance of Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress.
However, Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party termed it as a betrayal of the farmers. Leader of Opposition Devendra Fadnavis demanded a 100 per cent debt-waiver for the peasantry, before staging a walkout from the Assembly.
The scheme is tentatively estimated to cost around Rs 40,000 crore to the state exchequer.
It may be recalled that clearing the farm loan debts was a major issue in the last two assembly and Lok Sabha elections.
While the BJP swept the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP-Sena combine came to power in 2014, but this time they split and the MVA government took over in November 2019.