Deccan Chronicle

Loans to get easy for tenant farmers

New TS law to remove ‘tiller will be owner’ clause

- S.A. ISHAQUI I DC HYDERABAD, DEC 4

The Telangana state government has decided to amend the AP (Telangana Area) Tenancy & Agricultur­e Act, 1950, to provide farmers access to institutio­nal credit. Lack of this access had been driving farmers to suicide in many cases.

Tenant farmers are excluded from the formal financial sector because they don't have land titles. Though the existing Act mandates a written lease agreement between tenant and land holder and requires a copy of every lease to be presented to the tahsildar concerned, many land owners don’t enter into written agreements fearing that they may lose the right to their land if the lease is recorded.

According to legal experts, the provision under the Act for ’adverse possession’ is the main hurdle in recording the lease in the record of the revenue department. The provision confers ownership or occupancy right on a tenant who has cultivated the land continuous­ly over a long period of time.

In its draft Model Agricultur­al Land Leasing Act, 2016, NITI Aayog had suggested removing the clause of adverse possession in land laws of various states as it interferes with free functionin­g of the land lease market.

Studies of farmers’ suicides conducted by district collectors in Telangana state suggest that all the deaths are due to the inability to repay private loans that charge huge interest rates. In the absence of lease agreements, tenant farmers are forced to depend on private sources to meet their credit requiremen­ts.

The survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisati­on revealed that a negative growth rate of over 10 per cent registered in the agricultur­al sector was due to lack of access to adequate institutio­nal credit, as well as persistent crop failures, rise in input costs, irrigation facilities, fake seeds and increased use of fertiliser­s.

Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Mohammed Mahmood Ali said that the government had sought the assistance of Nalsar University to prepare an affective law that would protect the interests of tenant and land owners.

Though the existing Act provides for a fiveyear lease, many owners lease their land only for one or two crop seasons, fearing that a longer lease will lead to their losing their land.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from India