About 58 lakh farmers in Telangana will get a financial assistance of ₹4,000 each for every acre of land they own. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao launched the programme today at Indiranagar in Huzurabad mandal in Karimnagar district.

The State Government has allocated ₹12,000 crore for the scheme in the Budget for 2018-19. Under the scheme, the farmers will get ₹4,000 each an acre in the kharif and rabi seasons to take care of the credit needs ahead of the farm seasons.

He distributed the cheques and pattadar passbooks to farmers, kicking off the programme that will cover 1.30 lakh acres.

The passbooks, which have been printed after a State-wide verification of land records, will come with several security features. These include anti-copying feature, a unique QR code that helps in ascertaining the profile and transactions held and a barcode with a unique transaction id.

Tenant farmers excluded

However, farmers’ unions are demanding the inclusion of tenant farmers and those who do ‘shift cultivation’. The government has excluded about 11 lakh tenant farmers from the scheme.

They argued that the scheme should be not be limited to only the land patta-holders.

“It should be extended to all the real cultivators who are bearing the expenditure of cultivation including tenant farmers, adivasi farmers cultivating podu lands and farmers with sada bainama,” Kiran Kumar Vissa of Rythu Swarajya Vedika, has said.

There are more than 11 lakh tenant farmers, more than 2 lakh acres under podu cultivation by adivasis, and lakhs of farmers cultivating under sada bainama. “All these really require support from the government,” he said.

They alleged that the Licensed Cultivators Act, 2011 is being completely neglected in Telangana. They demand the government to issue Loan Eligibility Cards (LEC) to tenant farmers and extend the scheme to cover them.

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