Maharashtra farm loan waiver dispute escalates as Rohit Pawar calls hunger strike
Opposition MLA Rohit Pawar says he will begin an indefinite hunger strike on June 12 unless Maharashtra eases loan-waiver conditions that he argues exclude most farmers from meaningful relief.
A dispute over farm debt relief in Maharashtra has intensified after NCP-SP MLA Rohit Pawar announced that he will begin an indefinite hunger strike in Pandharpur on June 12. Pawar says the state government has effectively misled farmers by unveiling a loan-waiver scheme with conditions so strict that a large share of eligible households will still be left without meaningful support.
According to Pawar, farmers in the state have been trapped in a severe financial crisis for the past three to four years and had expected broader relief. He argues that the scheme announced by the government has raised hopes without addressing the debt burden faced by most cultivators. His protest is meant to force the government to remove those conditions and turn the programme into a blanket waiver rather than a tightly filtered benefit.
The demands he listed are specific and financially significant. Pawar wants the rule scrapped that limits 2019 loan-waiver beneficiaries to only Rs 50,000 this time, and he is asking for a flat waiver of up to Rs 200,000 for all farmers. He says the same principle should apply to the One-Time Settlement scheme so that earlier beneficiaries are not placed under a lower cap than other borrowers.
He also objects to the rule affecting farmers whose dues exceed Rs 200,000. In his view, the government should waive up to Rs 200,000 without first forcing the borrower to clear the balance above that threshold. Another demand is to abolish the condition requiring two consecutive years of timely repayments before a farmer can qualify for the incentive grant attached to the programme.
Pawar further said that 656,000 farmers who were eligible under the 2017 waiver but missed out because of documentation problems should receive the benefit immediately. He also called for the removal of what he described as anti-farmer trigger clauses in the crop insurance scheme, the restoration of the Re 1 crop insurance programme, and the restructuring of loan accounts before the sowing season so farmers have funds available for field operations.
By framing the protest as a fight to free farmers from debt, Pawar has turned a technical design issue in a loan package into a larger agri-policy confrontation. For Maharashtra’s farm economy, the outcome matters because access to credit, insurance and pre-sowing liquidity directly shapes how quickly growers can finance the next crop cycle.