Hyderabad: 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 co-sts, irrigation facilities, fake seeds and increa-sed 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 five-year 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.
Tahsildars must be made accountable
Tenant farmers will have access to institutional credit only when tahsildars level are made accountable for issuing tenancy certificates, said Mr Saramp-alli Malla Reddy, leader of the All India Kisan Sabha.
He wants the provisions of the proposed new law to include stringent penal provisions if tahsildars fail to issue certificates. He said that in December 2011, the erstwhile AP government had passed the Land Licensed Cultivators Act to grant tenant farmers access to institutional credit by giving them annual loan eligibility cards.
He said that though there was a provision in law for tenant farmers to enter their names in the revenue records, the tahsildar has to enter their name without the consent of the land holder in a column marked for the purpose.
He said making an entry in the column wo-uld not give any right to the tenant to claim title over the land, yet officials don’t enter their names due to pressure from landlords.
