Telangana Kaulu Raitula Gurtimpu Sadhana Committee and Samyukta Kisan Morcha have criticised the State government for the delay in recognising tenant cultivators despite high distress among them due to the El Nino effect.
Addressing a press conference here on Friday, Pasya Padma, T. Sagar, B. Kondal, Y. Chandra Reddy, Jakkula Venkatayya, Bhaskar, Vissa Kirankumar, Kanneganti Ravi, P. Shankar and Rowthu Ramesh requested the State government to commence the process of providing recognition to tenant cultivators immediately. They stated that they had been demanding for several months the implementation of the 2011 Licensed Cultivators Act and to give cultivator cards to tenant farmers from the ongoing Kharif season itself. However, the government had failed to commence the process so far even when the tenant farmers were already staring at serious losses due to lack of rains and El Nino effect.
The leaders of farmers’ unions said the tenant farmers will find it difficult to get minimum support price for their produce, which was likely to be impacted badly due to El Nino conditions, or else there would be high distress and discontent among the community. The Cabinet Sub-Committee appointed for the recognition of tenant cultivators should resolve the matter quickly so they could get benefit from this season itself.
The process of recognition of tenant cultivators through public enquiry at village level was laid out in the 2011 Act and a recent study showed that relying on OTP-based mechanism had proved very inadequate for registration of tenant farmers with procurement agencies as only 6.7% of cotton farmers, 8.5% of maize and soybean farmers and 17% of paddy farmers were able to sell their crop in their own name as cultivators.
