Telangana: 1.5 lakh tribal farmers to get Rythu Bandhu

Hyderabad: The prestigious Rythu Bandhu scheme, which completes five years of its implementation this year, will register another milestone. More than 1.5 lakh farmers from the Tribal communities will be included as the beneficiaries under the scheme and will be eligible to get Rs 5,000 per acre as input cost in June this year. With this, the total number of the Rythu Bandhu beneficiaries will be more than 72 lakhs.

Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has instructed the district authorities to launch the distribution of Podu land title deeds to the identified beneficiaries. Officials said the Collectors have begun the exercise to collect the information about the bank account details from the tribal farmers. It is estimated that the government will distribute Pattas for 4,01,405 acres of Podu land to 1,50,220 tribal farmers in 2,845 villages. The patta distribution programme will be launched from June 24.

A majority of the tribal farmers who were cultivating Podu lands have been identified in the old Khammam and Adilabad districts followed by Warangal and Karimnagar districts. All the land pattas without title disputes will be given to the farmers in the tribal habitations. Podu lands with ownership disputes will be kept pending for distribution until the issue is resolved through a dialogue between the two sides.

“At the time of launch of the Rythu Bandhu in 2018, the number of beneficiaries were around 55 lakh and today the number increases to 72 lakh. The state government already earmarked Rs 15,000 crore for this scheme alone in the current financial year and the required funds will be more once the tribal farmers are included in a large number under the scheme this year,” said a senior official of the state Agriculture department.

The government had spent Rs 65,559.28 crore on the implementation of the scheme so far.

State officials of the Finance department said that it required more funds than the allocations made in the budget outlay 2023-24 for the Rythu Bandhu scheme this year. Arrangements to disburse the scheme benefit to the farmers would begin from June end as the kharif season is set to begin shortly after the South West monsoon enters the state in about a week’s time. The Rythu Bandhu benefit will be released to the small farmers who own land between one acre to 5 five acres first and then other farmers will receive the amount in their bank accounts directly.

Small farmers alone constituted more than 70 per cent of the total beneficiaries of the Rythu Bandhu scheme in the state , officials said since it is election year, all the farmers including ‘land lords’ who own more than 20 acres will get the scheme benefit without any delay.