Hyderabad: Imposing restrictions on Rythu Bandhu during rabi to prevent farmers from cultivating paddy will be on top of the agenda at a high-level meeting convened by Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. He will interact with ministers, party MLAs, MLCs, MPs and Rythu Bandhu Samithi district committees at Pragathi Bhavan here on Friday.
Party sources said that Rao will seek feedback from all the leaders before taking the final call on whether to impose the restrictions or not.
The scheme is being implemented without any restrictions since its launch in May 2018. Under the scheme, the government credits Rs 5,000 per acre each in kharif and rabi directly into the bank accounts of over 60 lakh farmers, irrespective of the extent of land they hold.
Farmers owning 50 acres of land are getting Rs 5 lakh per year while the government is overall spending Rs 15,000 crore annually on the scheme.
This is for the first time that the government is contemplating restrictions, and comes in the wake of the Centre's decision of not procuring paddy from Telangana in rabi.
Most of Telangana farmers grow paddy in both kharif and rabi. Although the Centre is okay with procuring paddy from Telangana in kharif, it is refusing it in rabi on the grounds that parboiled rice produced in rabi has no takers in the country.
Against this backdrop, the state government is planning to discourage paddy cultivation in rabi by way of restrictions on Rythu Bandhu, sources added.
Meanwhile, in a break from the existing norm, the government is planning to credit the amount on the conclusion of sowing and after obtaining land-holding data from districts to determine who sowed paddy and who opted for other crops. It will extend Rythu Bandhu benefits to only those who sowed non-paddy crops.
