Telangana to Use Satellite Data for Rythu Bharosa

Hyderabad: The state government has decided to deploy satellite mapping and other advanced technologies to verify land cultivation during the ongoing rabi season, to ensure that financial assistance under the Rythu Bharosa scheme reaches only genuine farmers and lands that are actually under cultivation.

The assistance of Rs 6,000 per acre for the rabi season is proposed to be disbursed in January, coinciding with the Sankranti festival, after the government receives and analyses satellite-based cultivation data.

Agriculture minister Tummala Nageshara Rao directed officials of the agriculture department to expedite the satellite mapping process and submit a comprehensive report on cultivated lands by the first week of January.

He made it clear that the Rythu Bharosa assistance for the rabi season would be released strictly based on satellite mapping data, which will be a major shift from the existing verification mechanism.

During the recent kharif season, the state government had transferred around Rs 9,000 crore under the Rythu Bharosa scheme to farmers. However, officials estimate that by using satellite mapping to weed out uncultivable and fallow lands from the beneficiary list during the rabi season, the government could save at least Rs 2,000 crore. The move is also expected to improve transparency and reduce scope for errors or misuse.

The satellite mapping project is being implemented through Prof Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU), with technical support from an Italy-based Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) agency. The government has sanctioned `9 crore for the project for a period of two years and will allocate Rs 40 lakh annually towards operational expenses.

As part of the initiative, PJTSAU and SAR will conduct satellite surveys across all districts during the first week of every month and submit periodic reports detailing lands under cultivation and those left uncultivated.

At present, agriculture extension officers (AEOs) are responsible for visiting agricultural fields in villages and uploading details of the cropped area and crop type survey number-wise through a specially designed mobile application. However, the government has received complaints that due to excessive workload, some AEOs have been uploading data without physically inspecting fields. Each AEO is currently tasked with covering nearly 5,000 acres spread across four villages, making field-level verification challenging.

Telangana has more than 12,000 gram panchayats, which have been grouped into 2,604 clusters, with one AEO appointed for each cluster. These officers were assigned the responsibility of conducting digital surveys covering about 1.5 crore acres of agricultural land across the state. Due to the heavy workload, inconsistencies were noticed in the data submitted, prompting the government to turn to satellite-based verification.

In the kharif season this year, Rythu Bharosa assistance of Rs 6,000 per acre was extended to about 70.45 lakh farmers covering 1.06 crore acres. The breakdown of beneficiaries for kharif included 24.22 lakh farmers owning below one acre, 17.02 lakh up to two acres, 10.45 lakh up to three acres, 6.33 lakh up to four acres and 4.43 lakh up to five acres and eight lakh farmers, who own more than five acres.