No Rythu Bandhu, Rythu Bima benefits for tenant farmers

HYDERABAD: While Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has announced crop loss aid of Rs 10,000 per acre to tenant farmers for the first time, they will continue to lose the benefits of Rythu Bandhu, Rythu Bima, crop loans, and crop loan waiver schemes until the state government amends the 'Telangana Rights in Land and Pattadar Passbooks Act 2018'.

This Act does not recognise the rights of tenant farmers.

The BRS government may consider amending this Act in the election year to extend the benefits to nearly 15 lakh tenant farmers. The state government is now making special provisions for the time being to extend '10,000 per acre crop loss aid to the tenant farmers.
Chief Minister K.Chandrashekar Rao directed Chief Secretary A. Santhi Kumari to take necessary steps to make special provisions to extend the financial assistance to the tenant farmers for crop loss.

Following this, instructions were given to the revenue and agriculture departments to identify who are agriculture land owners and who are tenant farmers and assess the crop loss caused to land owners and tenant farmers to ensure that financial assistance is paid to them accordingly.
In the event of only tenant farmers sustaining losses, the entire compensation amount will be paid only to tenant farmers and owners will get nothing. The state government brought a new Act in 2018 titled 'The Telangana Rights in Land and Pattadar Passbooks Act 2018' by amending the previous Act that existed in Undivided AP.

In the previous Act, there used to be a column in the pattadar passbook issued to agricultural land owners in which the name of tenant farmers was also used to be mentioned. Based on this, the tenant farmers used to get crop loans from banks, input subsidy in the event of crop loss, crop loan waiver, crop insurance etc.
But the Telangana government amended this Act in 2018 removing the tenant farmers column and mentioning only land owners name. With this, only owners received all these benefits while tenant farmers got nothing although it's the tenant farmers who incurred expenditure on crops and suffered losses in the event of natural calamities. Banks stopped giving crop loans to tenant farmers and the state government's crop loan waiver scheme was also applicable only to owners.