Farmers Ask For Loan Information, Get Candy Crush Invites, Official Suspended

The Maharashtra government has suspended a top official for "negligence and irresponsible conduct" after farmers received a video game on their mobile phones instead of information about the loan waiver. The official, Satish Soni, is the commissioner of cooperation and also registrar of cooperative societies. The decision was taken after it was found Soni had tampered with video tutorial sent to farmers regarding the Mahatma Jyotirao Phule loan waiver scheme, announced by the Shiv Sena-led government last year, an official statement said on Wednesday.

Instead of the video tutorial which was sent out to farmers by the agriculture department, candy crush video game opened on their mobile phones, it said. The statement said an investigation revealed Soni had prepared two letters dated January 7, 2020, to be sent to the agriculture commissioner with a URL link of the video. Accordingly, the agriculture department asked its IT cell to further process it, but URL (web address) turned out to be wrong, the statement said.

On the same day, Soni sent another letter with the correct URL. But there was no mention of the earlier letter having wrong URL, it said. Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the address of documents and other resources on the World Wide Web. The first email URL contained candy crush video game and not information about the farm loan waiver scheme, the statement said.

The statement said due to Soni's "negligence and irresponsible conduct", there was interruption in execution of the government's ambitious scheme.

"It needs to be found out if the action was unintentional or deliberate and hence he is suspended with immediate effect," it added.