Panaji (Goa) Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar will be the final authority to decide beneficiaries under the ‘Debt Relief- One Time Settlement (OTS) scheme, as the State government re-opens the scheme to those mining affected borrowers, whose applications were pending before the banks or got rejected due to the expiry of the scheme in March 2016.

The scheme, which was initially launched in September 2014, is extended upto December 2017.

 “The “Debt Relief Scheme for mining affected Borrowers of Financial Institutions” is further extended upto December 31, 2017. The proposed extension is limited to only those proposals that are pending with the banks or those which were rejected earlier,” the order issued by Director Mines Prasanna Acharya reads.

Acharya said that since this is the last revision of the scheme, the final authority to grant the benefit either fully or partly in exceptional cases in either single case or group of cases shall lie with Chief Minister whose decision shall be final.

As per the scheme, a subsidy upto 35 percent on the total loan settlement amount is provided.