Cabinet to discuss acreage cap, eligibility criteria tomorrow

Hyderabad: The state government is all set to launch the Rythu Bharosa scheme from Sankranthi. The Cabinet sub-committee headed by Deputy CM Bhatti Vikramarka submitted its recommendations to the government on Thursday. As per the commendations, the scheme should be made applicable to only ‘active farmers’, even if they are income taxpayers and irrespective of the size of their landholding.

The sub-committee, it is said, was not in favour of putting a cap on the extent of the ownership of the land by the farmers and hence every farmer engaged in the farming activity will be benefitted by the scheme. Earlier, the government had proposed to put a cap on the landholding up to 10 acres. The sub-committee, however, made it clear that unused farmlands would not be entitled to the scheme.

The committee also recommended geo-mapping of the agricultural lands every season. The farmers will also have to submit applications for Rythu Bharosa every agricultural season.

According to sources, the sub-committee has recommended to the government to invite applications from the farmers every agricultural season to get the input cost of Rs 7,500 per acre.

All these recommendations will be put forward before the Cabinet meeting to be held on Saturday for final decision.

Official sources said that the state Agriculture department would invite applications from the farmers from January 5 and scrutinize them before depositing the scheme benefit directly into the farmers bank accounts.

The official records under the previous Rythu Bandhu scheme said that the total number of farmers who owned land up to 5 acres was 64.75 lakh. Among them, 24.24 lakh farmers owned below one acre of land and 17.72 lakh farmers possessed two acres, 11.30 lakh farmers has three acres, 6.54 lakh peasants were cultivating four acres and 4.92 lakh farmers owned five acres.